Former mayor of town in Alaska among 4 men killed in a small plane crash

The former mayor of a small town in Alaska, who was an experienced pilot, was among those killed when the small plane he was piloting crashed in shallow waters near a remote Alaskan town, officials said Thursday.

Alaska Department of Public Safety identified the pilot in Wednesday’s crash as Eric Middlebrook, 68, of Anchorage. The passengers were Ronald Schmidt, 65, Lance Schmidt, 20, and Daniel Simons, 82, all from California, according to the agency.

The Piper PA-24 took off from Anchorage and was bound for the airport in the small town of Seldovia, about 135 miles (220 kilometers) to the southwest.

Middlebrook, who had a commercial refrigerator business, previously served on the city council and had been mayor of Bethel, a town of 6,000 people in western Alaska that sits on the banks of the Kuskokwim River, said Mark Springer, a member of the Bethel City Council who knew him.

Springer said Middlebrook had moved to Anchorage in the last couple of years after living in Bethel since the 1980s, but he continued to visit the town.

Middlebrook had been flying his plane for decades to the villages that dot the Kuskokwim River Delta to fix coolers and refrigerators, Springer said.

“He was a fixture in the community and he was a respected guy. He was known all over the YK (Yukon–Kuskokwim) Delta. It’s a tragic loss,” Springer said.

Middlebrook, who graduated from a high school in Northern California, became mayor of Bethel in 2006, according to a local newspaper profile of him when he was elected to the office by the city council.

Family members of Middlebrook, Schmidt and Simons didn’t immediately return messages Thursday from The Associated Press seeking comment.

After the crash, the plane came to rest in about 15 feet (4.6 meters) of water in the Seldovia Slough near the shore, said Clint Johnson, the Alaska region chief of the National Transportation Safety Board. Troopers had to wait for the tide to go out before they could reach the plane and remove the victims.

A statement on Seldovia’s website said neighbors, friends and first responders all stepped in to help as soon as the plane crashed.

“Some of those involved will carry the images and emotions of today with them for a long time,” it said. “Please remember them, too.”

The statement described small planes as part of everyday life, connecting their small community to the outside world.

It was not immediately clear what caused the crash. The NTSB is investigating.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said in a post on social media that the past month has shown the difficult realities of travel in Alaska.

“Our vast distances and lack of road connections mean we depend on aviation to knit our state together, which makes accidents like this all the more heartbreaking,” she said.

Less than a week earlier, another plane crashed at a remote military site in western Alaska, killing all eight people aboard. The aircraft had been making its second approach to the runway in heavy fog and its pilots could not see the gravel airstrip, authorities said.

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Associated Press reporter Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed to this report.