A respected former mayor and veteran pilot has been identified as one of four people killed when a small aircraft crashed near Seldovia, Alaska, earlier this week.
Eric Middlebrook, 68, was among those who died Wednesday afternoon after a Piper PA-24 went down in Seldovia Slough, about 136 miles southwest of Anchorage.
Middlebrook, an experienced aviator, previously served as mayor of Bethel, a western Alaska community of roughly 6,000 residents, from 2006 to 2011.
The Alaska Department of Public Safety said the other victims were three California residents: Daniel Simons, 82, of Los Gatos, and Ronald Schmidt, 65, and Lance Schmidt, 20, both of San Jose.
Public records suggest the four people aboard the plane were related.
Officials said the group had departed Merrill Field Airport in Anchorage and was headed for the small coastal community of Seldovia when the aircraft crashed at approximately 1:15 p.m.
Clint Johnson, the National Transportation Safety Board’s chief for the Alaska region, said the single-engine Piper ended up submerged in roughly 15 feet of water.
Emergency crews faced difficult conditions reaching the wreckage in the partially frozen slough, where temperatures can drop to around 38 degrees Fahrenheit, according to Johnson.
Beloved former mayor Eric Middlebrook, 68, died when the Piper PA-24 went down in the Seldovia Slough, located 136 miles southwest of Anchorage, on Wednesday afternoon
Middlebrook was a seasoned pilot who was remembered for his ‘quiet and gentle’ demeanor
Dramatic video posted on social media showed the submerged aircraft as witnesses described hearing the plane go down.
Alaska State Troopers were able to recover four bodies from inside the plane after the tide level dropped at about 6.30pm. The NTSB is investigating the cause of the crash, while the state medical examiner conducts autopsies on each of the victims.
Middlebrook, who was the pilot of the plane, was remembered as a ‘beloved’ member of the local community in both Anchorage and Bethel. Friends paid tribute to his ‘quiet and gentle’ demeanor on social media, while saying he left behind his wife, Molly.
Mark Springer, a member of the Bethel City Council, said Middlebrook had a commercial refrigerator business and he frequently flew around Alaska to service customers.
‘He was a real hardworking guy doing actually an important job as essentially the only refrigeration technician doing commercial work,’ Springer told NBC and CBS affiliate KTUU-TV.
‘You’d always see him working on the coolers and the freezers at the stores here in Bethel, and he would fly his airplane to any village that called up and needed service on their equipment in the village stores.’
Springer said Middlebrook was a longtime Bethel resident who had moved to Anchorage over the last couple of years, but he frequently visited his hometown.
Four people were killed when a Piper PA-24-260 (like the one pictured) crashed in the waters in Alaska on Wednesday
The Piper PA-24-260 crashed at 1.15pm just moments after taking off from the airport in the small coastal town of Seldovia, about 136 miles southwest of Anchorage
‘He was a fixture in the community and he was a respected guy. He was known all over the [Yukon–Kuskokwim] Delta. It’s a tragic loss,’ Springer added.
‘He was a pretty cool guy. He was well-known here in Bethel and well-liked.’
Middlebrook graduated from Marysville High School in Northern California, according to a profile by the Appeal Democrat when he was elected as Bethel Mayor in 2006.
The local newspaper spoke with Ronald Schmidt, another victim of the plane crash, who it reported was Middlebrook’s brother.
Schmidt, who was a local marketing representative at Cisco Systems in San Jose, California at the time, described his brother as ‘very talented and very smart’.
US Senator Dan Sullivan, of Alaska, said on Thursday that he was ‘praying for the families and love ones of those who were killed’ in the plane crash.
‘These tragedies are heartbreaking and unacceptable, which is why aviation safety and infrastructure in Alaska continue to be a top focus of mine,’ Sullivan said.
‘I’ll get a briefing from the NTSB and the FAA as we work to get to the bottom of this tragedy.’
US Senator Dan Sullivan, of Alaska, said on Thursday that he was ‘praying for the families and love ones of those who were killed’ in the plane crash
The Piper-PA plane involved in the crash is a single-engine low-wing plane with the capacity for one pilot and up to five passengers.
The crash came less than a week after another plane went down at a remote military site in western Alaska, killing all eight people on board.
Authorities said the plane had been making a second attempt to land on the runway in heavy fog, and the pilots could not see the airstrip.
