The deaths of five people, including Leicester City’s owner, in a helicopter crash were accidental, an inquest jury has ruled.

Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, referred to in court as Khun Vichai, died in the crash along with two of his staff, Nursara Suknamai and Kaveporn Punpare, pilot Eric Swaffer, and Mr Swaffer’s girlfriend Izabela Roza Lechowicz, a fellow pilot.

The jury delivered its verdict on Tuesday after being previously instructed to conclude that the crash was accidental.

Philip Shepherd KC, representing the relatives of Khun Vichai, said those who died were the “innocent victims of a tragic accident that never needed to happen”.

His son Khun Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, described his father as “one-of-a-kind, an investor in dreams” and said: “We miss him and feel his loss every day.”

“My father trusted in the design of this helicopter,” he said in a statement. It wasn’t safe. It was a death trap.”

As the helicopter was leaving the King Power Stadium in Leicester on 27 October 2018, a fault caused it to spin “rapidly” out of control before it crashed outside the stadium and burst into flames, the inquest heard.

Jon Rudkin, Leicester City’s director of football, who had known Mr Srivaddhanaprabha for eight years, described the moment the Leonardo AW169 helicopter started to “nosedive” after taking off at 8.37pm.

“It held its position as it sometimes did,” he said. “As it turned it continued to turn and then go into a spin.

“As soon as it went on that first full circle, I thought this was strange.

“It then started to nosedive away from the stadium still rotating in the air.”

Mr Rudkin told the inquest he saw the chairman wave and give him a thumbs up before the helicopter took off.

The inquest was shown an animation of the helicopter’s mechanical failure and told a duplex bearing on the tail rotor became “seized and locked”, which caused the actuator control shaft to spin “very fast”.

Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) principal inspector Mark Jarvis said the pilot had done everything he could to try to avoid the crash.

The inquest also heard how police officers tried to smash the aircraft’s windscreen after it crashed, but would never have been able to break the “very strong structure” designed to withstand a bird strike at a speed of 180mph (290kph).

Sergeant Michael Hooper said he could hear the helicopter’s trapped pilot, Mr Swaffer, shouting: “Get me out of here, help me.”

The crashed helicopter was resting on its left-hand side, meaning neither side door could be opened. A fuel leak then caused the aircraft to catch fire.

PC Stephen Quartermain became emotional as he remembered realising “the people were going to die”.

Ms Lechowicz died from injuries sustained when the helicopter hit the ground – but the other four victims initially survived the crash, and were killed by smoke inhalation from the fire, a pathologist told the inquest.

‘Caring and devoted’

As the inquest opened at Leicester City Hall, the jury heard pen portraits of the victims, with Mr Srivaddhanaprabha described as a “caring and devoted husband, father, uncle and grandfather”.

In a tribute read by family barrister Philip Shepherd KC, relatives called him “a great inspiration to us all” and said: “We all loved him very much.”

They added: “He was adored by everyone for his kind spirit, generosity, charm, sense of humour and intellect.”

Kate Lechowicz, Ms Lechowicz’s sister, described her in a statement as an “extraordinary individual” who “exuded a passion for life” and who “accomplished her task with grace and efficiency”.

Kate Lechowicz also read a tribute to the helicopter’s pilot, Mr Swaffer, and said: “He was great company. He had profound love for aviation, technology, travel, his motorbike and life in general.”

Tributes were also paid to passenger Kaveporn Punpare, who had a young daughter and was one of several butlers employed by the late Leicester City chairman.

A statement prepared for the inquest by his wife said he had initially worked for Mr Srivaddhanaprabha as an assistant butler who accompanied family members on trips.

Meanwhile, Nusara Suknamai, an employee of Khun Vichai’s, was described as a “pillar” of her family.

Speaking to Sky News, her father, Viroj Suknamai, said: “She was a lively person, she was the breadwinner of the family.

“She was the one who looked after the family and after she passed away we have had difficulties financially.”

Ms Suknamai was a former Miss Thailand contestant.

Her father said: “I remember all the good memories that we had together, I remember when she was in the beauty pageants, I was the one who would drive her there.

“If she was still here today she would’ve had a very bright future ahead of her, she could have done many more things in her life.”

Before the start of the inquest, Mr Srivaddhanaprabha’s family launched a £2.15bn lawsuit against the helicopter’s manufacturer, Italian company Leonardo SpA.

It is the largest fatal accident claim in English history, according to the family’s lawyers. The sum is for loss of earnings and other damages as a result of the billionaire’s death.

Sir Keir Starmer has warned the UK has a “cohort of loners who are extreme and need to be factored in” as a leaked Home Office review said the UK should deal with extremism by focusing on concerning behaviours and activity rather than ideologies.

The prime minister said his government is “looking carefully where the key challenges” on extremism are, adding it is “very important” to focus on threats “so we can deploy our resource properly”.

“Obviously, that’s now informed with what I said last week in the aftermath of the Southport murders, where we’ve got the additional challenge, I think, of a cohort of loners who are extreme and they need to be factored in,” he said.

“So that’s the focus. In the end, what this comes down to is the safety and security of people across the United Kingdom, that’s my number one focus.”

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Sir Keir was speaking after a leaked Home Office extremism review suggested the UK should be focusing on behaviours and activities such as spreading conspiracy theories, misogyny, influencing racism and involvement in “an online subculture called the manosphere”.

The Home Office said Islamism and extreme right-wing ideologies are the “most prominent” issues they are tackling today.

In August, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the Home Office was conducting a “rapid analytical spring on extremism” to map and monitor trends and inform the government’s approach to extremism.

Last week, Sir Keir Starmer said he would change the law if needed to recognise the new threat posed by extremists without specific ideologies ahead of the jailing of Axel Rudakubana for the stabbing to death of three young girls in Southport last summer.

The 18-year-old had been referred to the anti-terror Prevent programme three times but was not deemed as an extremist under the scheme’s criteria. And, although he pleaded guilty to murder, police were unable to identify Rudakubana’s motive, so his crimes fell outside the definition of terrorism.

Recommendations could be breach of freedom of speech

The leaked review, obtained ahead of its publication by the Policy Exchange thinktank, recommends reversing the guidance, introduced by then Home Secretary Suella Braverman, for police to reduce dealing with non-hate crime incidents.

It says a new crime, making “harmful communications” online illegal, should be introduced instead. The Conservative government rejected this on freedom of speech grounds.

Policy Exchange’s Paul Stott and Andrew Gilligan said recommendations to class claims of two-tier policing as a “right-wing extremist narrative” will also raise concerns over freedom of speech.

Dangerous individuals could be missed

They said including “behaviours” such as violence against women and girls, spreading misinformation and an interest in gore or extreme violence in the definition of extremism could “swamp already stretched counter-extremism staff and counter-terror police with thousands of new cases”.

This could increase the risk “that genuinely dangerous individuals are missed – it risks addressing symptoms, not causes”, Policy Exchange said.

The review itself admits many who display such behaviours are not extremists.

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Review ‘downplays Islamism’

Following Rudakubana’s guilty plea last week, Sir Keir said the UK “faces a new threat” and the teenager represented a new kind of threat with “acts of extreme violence perpetrated by loners, misfits, young men in their bedroom, accessing all manner of material online, desperate for notoriety”.

He said he would change the law, if needed, “to recognise this new and dangerous threat” and said a review of “our entire counter-extremism system” would take place “to make sure we have what we need to defeat it”.

The review also “de-centres and downplays Islamism, by far the greatest threat to national security”, Policy Exchange said.

It said environmental extremism and Hindu extremism should be tackled, as well as “left-wing, anarchist and single issue extremism”.

And Policy Exchange said it has “ignored, even repudiated” recommendations by previous Prevent reviewer William Shawcross that the programme is the wrong place for dealing with the psychologically unstable.

Government focused on Islamism and right-wing ideologies

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The counter-extremism sprint sought to comprehensively assess the challenge facing our country and lay the foundations for a new approach to tackling extremism – so we can stop people being drawn towards hateful ideologies.

“This includes tackling Islamism and extreme right-wing ideologies, which are the most prominent today.

“The findings from the sprint have not been formally agreed by ministers and we are considering a wide range of potential next steps arising from that work.”

Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp said: “By extending the definition of extremism so widely, the government risks losing focus on ideologically motivated terrorists who pose the most risk to life.

“In fact, the Shawcross Review of Prevent made clear that counter-extremism and the counterterrorism strategy should be more focused on terrorist ideology, not less.

“Prevent must be equipped to deal with the terrorist threats in our society, and we should not be dialling back efforts to confront this.

“What the government seems to be planning is a backwards step in the interests of the political correctness we know Keir Starmer loves.

“Starmer wants the thought police to stop anyone telling uncomfortable truths that he and his left-wing lawyer friends don’t like.”

Police searches in the River Dee to trace two sisters who disappeared in Aberdeen three weeks ago have come to an end.

Eliza and Henrietta Huszti, both 32, were last spotted on CCTV in the city’s Market Street at Victoria Bridge at about 2.12am on Tuesday 7 January.

The women were seen crossing the bridge and turning right on to a footpath next to the River Dee in the direction of Aberdeen Boat Club.

The siblings’ disappearance sparked a major Police Scotland operation, including specialist advisers and the force’s air support, dog branch and marine unit.

In an update on Monday, the force announced that “extensive and detailed searches” of the river and harbour had concluded.

But wider inquiries to find the sisters continue, including searches of coastal areas in the north and south of Aberdeen.

Superintendent David Howieson said any further information received by police will be “acted upon”.

He added: “Our thoughts are very much with their family at what is a very difficult time.”

Investigating officers previously said there had been “no evidence” of the women leaving the immediate area and there had been nothing to suggest “suspicious circumstances or criminality”.

The police revealed that the sisters – who are part of a set of triplets and originally from Hungary – visited the bridge where they were last seen about 12 hours before they disappeared.

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They also sent a text message to their landlady on the morning they vanished, indicating they would not be returning to the flat.

In a statement released via Police Scotland earlier this month, the women’s family said: “This has been a very worrying and upsetting time for our family.

“We are really worried about Eliza and Henrietta and all we want is for them to be found.”