Victims identified in EagleMed helicopter crash in Oklahoma
For the fourth time in five years, a helicopter belonging to Wichita-based EagleMed has been involved in a fatal crash.
Authorities say one person was killed and two were injured after an EagleMed medical helicopter crashed Thursday in woods in eastern Oklahoma.
McIntosh County Emergency Management Director Wesley Dawson said the crash was reported about 11:40 p.m. Dawson said searchers on foot and on all-terrain vehicles found the wreckage about 4 a.m. Friday.
The crash site is west of Eufaula, about 120 miles east of Oklahoma City.
EagleMed said in a statement Friday that all three people on board the helicopter were EagleMed employees. Killed in the crash was pilot Matt Mathews, the statement said.
The company said in the statement that nurse Kim Ramsey and paramedic Ryan Setzkorn suffered “non-life threatening” injuries.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and loved ones of those involved and our entire EagleMed family,” EagleMed president Larry Bugg said in the statement.
A Federal Aviation Administration spokesman says agency investigators are being sent to the scene and that the National Transportation Safety Board will lead the investigation.
It is the fourth fatal crash of an EagleMed helicopter in Oklahoma over the past five years.
In June 2013, an EagleMed helicopter crashed after taking off from Choctaw Nation Health Care Center near Talihina, Okla., killing a patient on board and injuring three crew members. That crash followed one four months earlier, in February 2013, in which an EagleMed helicopter crashed near the St. Ann Retirement Center in northwest Oklahoma City, killing two people on board and injuring a third person.
And in July 2010 an EagleMed helicopter crashed in a field in Kingfisher, about 50 miles northwest of Oklahoma City, killing the pilot and a nurse who was on board.
This story was originally published March 13, 2015 at 7:46 AM with the headline "Victims identified in EagleMed helicopter crash in Oklahoma."