Alaska State Troopers

A Sterling couple died in a vehicle collision just after noon Friday at Mile 90.5 of the Sterling Highway just east of Soldotna, near the Jim Dahler Road-Forest Lane intersection

The pilot of the air ambulance that crashed outside Cooper Landing Friday and killed three has been identified. Glen Morthorpe was the director of operations for Security Aviation, which operated the Medevac Alaska flight that also killed registered nurse Rob Cartner and paramedic Maddox Burts.
    Shortly after 7 p.m. the twin-engine Piper Navajo Chieftain crashed into the Kenai Mountains at about 1,450 feet near Mile 61 of the Sterling Highway and was witnessed by several motorists who contacted the Alaska State Troopers in Soldotna.

      Three men are dead after their aircraft crashed Friday evening in the mountains west of Cooper Landing.

On Friday about 7:12 p.m. Alaska State Troopers in Soldotna received multiple reports of an airplane crash near Jean Lake. A helicopter from the Alaska Rescue Coordination Center responded and located the crash site that night, but was unable to land due to weather and terrain.

Saturday afternoon the Troopers' Helo 3 attempted to reach the crash of the Piper Navajo Chieftain, but also was unable to land in the area.

The Central Kenai Peninsula is unfortunately well-represented on the recently released list of Alaska State Trooper cold case files.
    There are four homicides from the peninsula on the list of 69 unsolved killings statewide. Florence Tagala of Kenai was killed in 1977. Theodore Goodmann of Hope was killed in 1983. Charles Talbert of Seward was killed in September 1998, and Gerald Sibley of Kenai was killed in 2002.
    There are 109 unexplained disappearances on the list, with 18 from the Kenai.