Emily Longnecker/Eyewitness News
Decatur County - A Rushville-based Air Ambulance team is suspending flights following a crash that killed three crew members Sunday. The Air Evac Lifeteam chopper went down in rural Decatur County near the town of Burney.
The National Transportation Safety Board and FAA will try to figure out what caused the medical helicopter with Air Evac Lifeteam to crash just minutes after take off Sunday afternoon.
All three crew members on board died. They include pilot Roger Warren, Flight Nurse Sandra Pearson and Paramedic Wade Weston.
The company released a statement saying its focus would be on the family members of the three crew members killed. Some of them were expected to come to the company's Rushville Base sometime Monday afternoon.
"It's actually going to feel weird not seeing them anymore," said Darrell Miller, owner of Country Cooker Family Restaurant.
Miller's restaurant is situated next to Rush Memorial Hospital. He said since the base opened last February, Warren, Pearson and Weston had all become regulars.
"They came in two to three times a week so we got to know each other personally and we had a good relationship with them," said Miller. "They will be missed greatly."
Mike Cole, a Burney firefighter, says the crew had just left an annual picnic for the Burney Volunteer Fire Department when the crash occurred.
For now the company is suspending its other flights in Indiana until it can make sure that its other flight crews are coping and able to work after such a devastating loss.
But Sunday's tragedy was not a first for Air Evac Lifeteam. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, another of the company's helicopter's crashed eight months ago near Cherokee, Alabama. In that crash, the pilot, flight nurse, and paramedic all died too. A cause for that accident has not been determined.
