Besides Vic Morrow, two other people died in that helicopter crash on the set of the Twilight Zone: the two kids his character was supposed to be rescuing.
Six-year-old Renee Shinn Chen and 7-year-old Myca Dinh Le were paid under the table so producers could get around the child labor laws that forbade kids from working at night or near explosives. According to the New York Times, the father of Renee Shinn Chen later testified that he wasn't told there would be pyrotechnics or a low-flying helicopter.
The deaths were so horrific (one child was crushed, the other decapitated) that co-director John Landis, the special-effects coordinator, and the pilot were all charged with manslaughter. In court, much of the testimony focused on whether telling a low-flying helicopter to fly "lower, lower, lower" was negligent, especially given the fact that there were two small children directly below, they were about to set off explosives, and it was against California law for those kids to be there in the first place. And yet, for some reason the defendants were all acquitted, thus proving that all you need to do to not be convicted of manslaughter is have money and work in Hollywood.
The families did get at least a small amount of monetary justice, though, when Landis, producer Steven Spielberg, and Warner Brothers settled the families' lawsuits out of court.
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