Awesome photos! It looks great in that livery too… we just got an A320 FTD at work so I’m all about them at the moment 
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Sharing this because I thought it was interesting and relevant, considering recent events. It should probably have gone in the NATO thread, but here goes anyway:
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They found the rotor and transmission intact, so not looking like a mast bumping episode. Juan Brown speculated that the way it yawed so hard in level flight, snapping the boom where it did, points to a major component failure in the vicinity of the engine compartment.
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My guess (likely wrong) is a failed pitch change link. Mast bumping gets tossed about way too much in speculation circles.
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I did wonder about tail rotor failure and loss of tail boom when it started spinning
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A tailrotor failure is a different and much more gentle animal. Had the TR failed at their forward speed, yes, there would have been a right yaw but one not nearly so dramatic or violent. The helicopter would have tracked relatively straight. The pilot would head to Linden, roll the throttle off and autorotate to a feathery running landing.
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Could it have been a tail rotor drive shaft failure that severed the boom…
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I guess so. The tailboom is a monocoque soda can. It doesn’t take much. But as @chipwich said, the fact that the main rotor, mast and GB separated intact implies that the problem was there, not further aft. The 90 yaw indicates to me a massive dose of instant torque. Anything at the tailboom would result in an inability to resist torque, not cause more of it. A bad thing for sure. But an order of magnitude less violent.
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The investigation will hopefully shed some light on this tragic accident
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Oof, nice landing. That is not exactly flat terrain.
https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1kddbo0/video_of_172_dead_stick_landing_at_riv/
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Hope he is a good Player and rakes his divots out of the sand trap after they get the plane out.
Wheels
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Looks like a textbook forced landing.
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