Valley business owner sees eerie connection to Brooklyn Bridge ship crash

When Israel Villarreal heard the news about the Mexican Navy ship that crashed into the Brooklyn Bridge last Saturday killing two people and injuring over a dozen others, he felt an eerie connection.

Villarreal, a Navy veteran and local business owner who currently serves as the San Benito CISD Board Secretary, recognized the ship as one he’d had the opportunity to tour.

In 2017, Villarreal was sent to Bunson, South Korea for a training operation. At the time, he was a corpsman with the U.S. Navy.

During some off time, he ventured out into the city. While riding the sky tram, which takes riders up toward a mountain, he had a bird’s eye view of much of the city. It was then that he first saw the Cuauhtémoc, the 300-foot training vessel for the Mexican Navy.

“As I’m going, I see an old-style sailing ship with a Mexican flag,” he recalled. “I’m just like, ‘Wait, I’m in Korea. That is a Mexican flag.’ I was just mind blown. I was like, ‘Wow. I wonder what that ship is doing way out here from Mexico.’”

The following day, the ship docked at the base where Villarreal was stationed. He recalled being notified that the Mexican Naval Academy was allowing service members the opportunity to board the ship.

“During lunch, I went that Monday and got on the ship, and it was really awesome,” Villarreal recalled. “They’re kids that are going through their naval academy, but in Mexico. You’re in Korea, and you’re talking to people that are from Mexico. It’s just kind of unbelievable that this is kind of the way it played out.”

Seeing the news about the ship colliding with the Brooklyn Bridge brought upon a flood of memories from his time in South Korea. It also prompted a startling revelation for Villarreal and his wife: this was the second time in less than two months that he found himself connected to a tragedy.

On April 10, a Bell 206 LongRanger IV that was giving a sightseeing tour of New York City crashed into the Hudson River, killing a family of five and the pilot. Villarreal and his wife had taken the same tour on the exact same helicopter in 2021.

He recalled the moment he realized that he had taken the same tour when he saw a picture of the family taken moments before the crash. He recognized the life vests they wore due to the similarity to the ones worn by himself and his wife when they did their own tour.

“When I saw the family, I was like, ‘Hey, we were wearing the same life vests,’” he said. “I couldn’t see the tail number of the aircraft. Then when they pulled it out of the water, I could clearly see the tail number, and I told my wife, ‘I think that’s the same exact one.’”

This photo shows Israel and Gloria Villarreal with a helicopter that crashed into the Hudson River in New York City killing a family of five on April 10, 2025. The photo was taken in 2021 when the couple took that same tour. (Courtesy: Israel Villarreal)

He began going through photos taken from the day of his helicopter tour. It was then that he was able to confirm that the tail number of the helicopter he and his wife rode on matched the one all over the news: N216MH.

“I showed my wife. I said, ‘Look, we were on the exact same helicopter,’” he said. “It was just that connection, you know. It’s a tragedy, but that’s the risk associated with aviation.”

Upon realizing that he had connections to two recent tragic events in New York City, he shared some photos of the Mexican ship that he’d taken on his Facebook account.

“It’s me, I’m the jinks,” his post read with some crying emojis. “First the helicopter and now this boat in New York.”

Villarreal said that he has had individuals point out the eerie similarities of his situation to the popular horror film franchise, “Final Destination.”

“Somebody said a comment like, ‘Oh, ‘Final Destination.’ Like, you keep avoiding this,’” he said. “No, not really. That’s life. There’s a lot of tragedies in life, and life is unpredictable. That’s just the way things happen. We cannot prevent everything bad from happening.”

Despite the strange coincidences, Villarreal said that he is not at all concerned for his safety, nor does he feel like he is beating the odds.

“I’ll be the first to tell you that I hope we don’t have this conversation again based on a third thing,” Villarreal said. “Then, I will probably start questioning it a little bit more. But hopefully it’s just these two.”

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