Two English sightseers and two pilots on a sky tour of Manhattan were hurt when their helicopter crashed in a river in New York City on Tuesday.

One female tourist was still missing when the crash victims were pulled out of the murky East River by police divers and firefighters shortly after the 3:22 p.m. mishap.

Two women, one of whom suffered cardiac arrest, were taken to the Bellevue Hospital, police said, according to the New York Post. One male passenger was taken to the NYU Hospital while another man was treated on the pier.

The Bell 206 helicopter crashed and overturned in the water within seconds after taking off from the East 34th Street Heliport in midtown Manhattan. A witness recounted the incident.

"He was trying to land and there was another helicopter on the pad," Carlos Acevedo, 40, said, according to the New York Daily News. "It seems like he was going down and then he stopped and spun a couple of times. He went down under the water."
Rescuers immediately pulled the survivors out of the water before the helicopter sank. The U.S. Coast Guard also sent rescue boats to the accident scene.

The cause of the crash is under investigation.

It was not the first time that a tourist helicopter figured in an accident in Manhattan. In 2009, a small plane and a helicopter collided in mid-air and crashed into the Hudson River. Five Italian tourists were killed in the accident.