‘Generous’ West Virginia coal billionaire dies in helicopter crash. Bevin ‘heartbroken.’

West Virginia coal billionaire and philanthropist Chris Cline died with six other Americans when a helicoptercrashed Thursday off Grand Cay island in the Bahamas, according to media reports and Bahamian police.

A statement from the Royal Bahamas Police Force said the helicopter went missing shortly after leaving Big Grand Cay and authorities and local residents later found the crash site two miles off Grand Cay. Police identified those killed as four women and three men but did not provide names.

Police superintendent Shanta Knowles said police received a missing aircraft report from Florida and were told that billionaire Chris Cline and a group of Americans from Big Grand Cay failed to arrive as expected in Fort Lauderdale.

Bahamian police did not provide a cause of the crash but said an investigation with civil aviation authorities was underway. The bodies have been recovered.

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin said his family is heartbroken after hearing about the loss of “dear friend” Cline.

“A brilliant businessman and one of the most generous people I have ever met,” Bevin said in a tweet.

The Register-Herald newspaper in Beckley, West Virginia, quoted Gov. Jim Justice as saying that one of the people killed in the crash was Chris Cline, whom the newspaper described as a “billionaire mining entrepreneur,” ‘‘coal tycoon” and “benefactor to southern West Virginia.”

“West Virginia lost a super star, without any question,” the newspaper quoted Justice as saying. “A giving, good man. I just love him with all my soul. ... As governor, I will tell you we’ve lost a great West Virginian.”

Justice told the newspaper he could not yet officially identify anyone else who died in the crash. Later reports said one of the dead was Cline’s daughter, but that wasn’t confirmed.

West Virginia Coal Association President Bill Raney described him as “a very farsighted entrepreneur” with a “Midas touch.”

Cline worked in the coal industry in West Virginia at 22 before founding his own energy development group, the Cline Group in 1990, and in 2006, he started Foresight Energy to develop and operate mines in Illinois, the New York Times reported. He sold a stake in one of his companies for a lot of money a few years ago.

Forbes estimated Cline’s fortune at $1.8 billion this year. Cline donated heavily to President Donald Trump and other Republicans. Federal records show he gave the president’s inaugural committee $1 million in 2017 and spread thousands more to conservative groups as well as committees representing prominent Republicans such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

He also gave at least $8.5 million to Marshall University.

“Jerome Gilbert, the university president, referred to him as a ‘son of Marshall’ on Twitter Thursday night,” the New York Times reported. “Chris’s generosity to our research and athletics programs has made a mark on Marshall University,’ he wrote. ’I am praying for his family.”

This story was originally published July 5, 2019 at 8:40 AM.