Search suspended for missing air ambulance

A week after an intensive search for an overdue LifeGuard Alaska and the four people on board began, officials have called off the effort.

Among the remaining souls not recovered is former Butte-area resident Cameron Carter, 24.

The air ambulance with three crew members and a patient aboard was reported overdue at 7:02 p.m. Dec. 3 in the Prince William Sound area on its way to an Anchorage hospital. For most of the past week the search was fruitless, but on Friday debris from the helicopter and the body of one of its crew members, 47-year-old flight nurse John Stumpff of Sterling, were found.

Nothing more was found over the weekend, and at about 2 p.m. Monday the search and rescue was officially called off, Alaska State Troopers report.

Also on board were pilot Lance Brabham, 42, of Soldotna and patient Gayle McDowell, an innkeeper from Cordova.

Although part of a Kenai air ambulance flight crew, Carter got his start as a teenage volunteer in Butte, and became an emergency medical technician, then a paramedic.

Butte Fire Chief Charles Von Gunten said earlier that those on the Butte team knew Carter as hardworking and, although young, he earned his peers’ respect.