{"id":63132,"date":"2025-08-12T18:08:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T18:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/63132\/"},"modified":"2025-08-12T18:08:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T18:08:12","slug":"pilot-has-no-memory-of-fatal-chopper-crash-and-has-become-a-different-person-matt-wright-trial-hears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/63132\/","title":{"rendered":"Pilot has no memory of fatal chopper crash and has become a ‘different person’, Matt Wright trial hears"},"content":{"rendered":"

The helicopter pilot involved in the crash that killed Chris “Willow” Wilson has conceded he “intentionally disconnected” the Netflix star before he fell 25 metres to his death.<\/p>\n

Sebastian Robinson testified in the Northern Territory Supreme Court trial of celebrity crocodile wrangler Matt Wright on Tuesday, where he told the jury the he was “a different person” after the crash and may never walk again.<\/p>\n

Catch up on today’s live coverage of Matt Wright’s Supreme Court trial<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors alleged Mr Wright tried to frustrate investigations into the downed helicopter in a bid to cover up sloppy record keeping. The TV star has pleaded not guilty to three counts of attempting to pervert the course of justice.<\/p>\n

Neither Mr Wright nor Mr Robinson are accused of any wrongdoing in relation to the crash itself.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Matt Wright has pleaded not guilty to all three counts and has maintained his innocence. (ABC News: Mary Franklin)<\/p>\n

Alternative would have been ‘catastrophic’<\/p>\n

The court heard earlier that Mr Wilson died after the helicopter he was slung underneath \u2014 during a crocodile egg-collecting expedition in remote Arnhem Land \u2014 crashed while being piloted by Mr Robinson in 2022.<\/p>\n

Under questioning from Crown prosecutor Jason Gullaci SC, Mr Robinson said while he had no memory of the crash, the pilot accepted he “must have intentionally disconnected” Mr Wilson from the sling that was suspending him 25 metres above the ground.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Chris Wilson died in the 2022 chopper crash. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

Mr Robinson said, in an emergency, best practice was to “try to put the collector on the ground or to the safest place possible”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But in the event of complete engine failure, the court heard not releasing the collector immediately would be “catastrophic”.<\/p>\n

“You’re going straight down on top of them,” he said.<\/p>\n

“He would have got raked all through the vegetation and it would have been severely worse than what happened.”<\/p>\n

Mr Robinson also denied being a frequent drug user after a previous witness, fellow chopper pilot Jock Purcell, agreed under cross-examination that Mr Robinson was “a party animal”<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mr Robinson said he had used cocaine “maybe a couple of times a year” in the five years before the accident, but denied ever flying while intoxicated.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Sebastian Robinson testified in the trial on Tuesday. (ABC News: Mary Franklin)<\/p>\n

“Were you a raging cocaine junkie, Mr Robinson?” Mr Galluci asked.<\/p>\n

“Not at all,” Mr Robinson replied.<\/p>\n

The prosecution last week told jurors a blood sample taken from Mr Robinson after the crash contained traces of cocaine, but was below the “prescribed amount for enforcement”<\/a> under aviation regulations.<\/p>\n

‘If he said jump, they’d say how high’<\/p>\n

Mr Robinson told the court the young men working for Matt Wright in the lead-up to the fatal crash idolised the Netflix star and would “do whatever he said”.<\/p>\n

It was “very common” for Mr Wright’s employees to disconnect the Hobbs meter flight recorders in his helicopters and neglect to manually record flight hours, the pilot said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

It’s the second week of Matt Wright’s criminal trial in Darwin. (ABC News: Mary Franklin)<\/p>\n

When Mr Gullaci asked Mr Robinson who benefited from that practice, he replied “the owner, Mr Wright”.<\/p>\n

“He owned the aircraft and obviously, if you’re doing more hours and you’re not recording them, you get to make the extra money, and it prolongs maintenance intervals between having to spend money,” the pilot said.<\/p>\n

“Did people who worked for Mr Wright follow his directions about the Hobbs meter and the recording [of hours]?” Mr Gullaci asked.<\/p>\n

“Absolutely, everyone looked at Matt as an idol and if he said ‘jump’ they’d say ‘how high’,” Mr Robinson said.<\/p>\n

“Everyone wanted to be around him, work for him.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Jason Gullaci asked the pilot about Matt Wright’s employees. (ABC News: Marcus Kennedy)<\/p>\n

“Did he have an aura about him?” Mr Gullaci asked.<\/p>\n

“He did,” Mr Robinson said.<\/p>\n

“We were young men, we looked up to him and we wanted to do our best to make ourselves look good in front of him and do whatever he said.”<\/p>\n

Pilot details crash injuries<\/p>\n

Mr Robinson also detailed the extensive injuries he suffered in the crash, including a traumatic brain injury and multiple spinal fractures, rendering him a paraplegic.<\/p>\n

“I can’t put it into words, what I’m thinking in my brain or what I’m trying to say, I get frustrated very easily,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I have sleep issues, yeah, mood swings, I definitely feel that I’m a different person compared to who I was pre-accident.”\"A<\/p>\n

Doctors told Sebastian Robinson he may never walk again after the crash. (ABC News: Mary Franklin)<\/p>\n

Mr Robinson said he was told he would never walk again before Mr Wright came to visit him in hospital in the days after the crash.<\/p>\n

“I was told I was in pretty bad shape and they told me that I had a severe spinal injury, that I may never walk again but I did my best to try not to believe it,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Obviously, dealing with a brain injury and everything, it was a very hard time.”<\/p>\n

The trial continues in Darwin on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The helicopter pilot involved in the crash that killed Chris “Willow” Wilson has conceded he “intentionally disconnected” the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63133,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[48757,64,63,44748,1154,5249,1300,15186,4892,3899,34408,35597,435,44,1098,44749,32574,1160,9747,50658,50657,50659,4031,50656,48746],"class_list":["post-63132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-attempt-to-pervert-the-course-of-justice","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-chris-wilson","tag-crash","tag-darwin","tag-death","tag-engine-failure","tag-helicopter","tag-injury","tag-matt-wright","tag-national-geographic","tag-netflix","tag-news","tag-nt","tag-outback-wrangler","tag-paraplegic","tag-pilot","tag-robinson","tag-seb","tag-sebastian","tag-spinal-fracture","tag-star","tag-wild-croc-territory","tag-willow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}