Three medical workers were killed Friday on their way to pick up a patient when their air-ambulance flight crashed in southwestern Colorado.
The downed plane was carrying a doctor, a paramedic and a flight nurse, said 1st Lt. Steve Hamilton of the Colorado Wing of the Civil Air Patrol.
One of the three on board was piloting the plane, Hamilton said.
Wreckage of the plane, which had disappeared from radar during stormy weather early Friday, was spotted about 1:30 p.m. by a search plane, a V-22 Osprey flown by the Air National Guard out of Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. The Osprey crew did not spot any survivors, Hamilton said.
A Black Hawk helicopter, also out of Kirtland, set down a crew near the crash site, and they confirmed there were no survivors.
The three victims have not been identified by authorities.
The Eagle Air Medical plane from Chinle, Ariz., went down at 2:11 a.m. near Green Lake and Charley's Peak while headed to Alamosa to pick up an emergency patient slated to be transported to a Colorado Springs hospital, said Conejos County Sheriff Robert Gurule.
It was raining and clouds were at a low elevation when the Beechcraft King Air C-90 twin-engine turboprop crashed about 20 miles west of Alamosa, said Dustin Duncan, spokesman for the Association of Air Medical Services. The group helped to arrange the search for the plane.
A Denver air-traffic control official called when the plane disappeared off radar, Gurule said.
The patient was taken by ambulance to the Colorado Springs hospital, Duncan said.
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206
