Copter Wreck Found; Four on Board Are Dead

The wreckage of a helicopter that crashed while transporting a patient to a Nevada hospital was discovered Thursday in the Sierra, but none of the four people on board survived the crash.

The patient and three crew members were aboard the helicopter when it went down Wednesday night in windy, snowy weather near Bridgeport, according to the Mono County Sheriff’s Department.

The helicopter, which belonged to Care Flight, a program operated by the Regional Emergency Medical Services Authority, had been carrying the patient from a Mono County hospital to a hospital in Reno when the pilot suddenly radioed a distress message to his dispatcher.

“Approximately 15 minutes later, a passing motorist advised the Mono County Sheriff’s Department that she had observed a helicopter out of control about 16 miles north of Bridgeport,” said public safety officer Mike Booher.

The woman also reported seeing a “flash” after the helicopter dropped out of sight, Booher said.

Snow during the night forced rescuers to temporarily call off a search for the chopper, he said, and a Navy helicopter spotted the wreckage Thursday morning. All four victims appeared to have been killed on impact, Booher said.

The names of the dead were not immediately released, but Care Flight spokeswoman Stephanie Kruse told the Associated Press that the pilot was Alan Larson, the company’s lead pilot. She said the other passengers were a nurse, an emergency medical technician and the patient, a 33-year-old Carson City resident.

Kruse told the AP that Larson had no time to say what went wrong when he radioed the Care Flight dispatcher. She said this was the 10-year-old service’s first helicopter crash. An airplane used for hospital transportation crashed some years ago, killing a nurse and a pilot, she added.