Medical helicopter goes missing in Central California

Four people were killed in a crash involving a medical helicopter in California Thursday night, NBC News reported.

The four victims were the pilot, a nurse, a paramedic and a patient, the station said, citing local emergency officials.

Searchers later found a debris field and there were no survivors, Kern County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Bill Smallwood officials told NBC News. Officials did not say why the patient was being taken to the hospital, and the names of the dead are being withheld until family members can be informed.

At 7:05 p.m., contact was lost with the helicopter, and it wasn’t until 8:35 p.m. that a debris field was located, Lynch said. The communications center made contact to the control towers in Porterville and Bakersfield discovering the aircraft didn’t communicate with them either.

Conditions in Kern County are damp with thick fog. The crew was experienced and had been working together for “quite some time”, Valeri said.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the crash.

According to the FAA the tail number of the helicopter matches that of an American Ambulance Helicopter out of Fresno.