Four people have been killed in a medevac helicopter crash in Kern County, California, including critical care flight nurse Marco “Tony” Lopez; one of Cochise County’s “home town heroes.”
Just before 7 p.m. on Thursday, the Skylife H-4 helicopter left Porterville Airport with a critical patient who was being transferred to San Joaquin Community Hospital in Bakersfield, California, according tothe Cochise County Sheriff’s Office.
The Fresno County EMS dispatch center immediately contacted both airport towers after a routine safety call to helicopter crew was not answered. Dispatch then contacted the local fire department and sheriff’s office.
There were four people on board the helicopter: a pilot, a flight nurse, a flight paramedic and the patient.
The Sheriff’s Office reports that thick fog and rain made it hard for the search and rescue crews. The helicopter went down amid rolling hills of cattle-grazing country east of the town of McFarland, 135 miles northwest of Los Angeles. A Kern County Sheriff’s Office helicopter team reported their sighting of a debris field near McFarland at around 20:35 hrs.
Paramedic Kyle Juarez, age 37, Lopez, age 42, pilot Thomas Hampl, age 49, and a female patient who wasn’t identified died when their SkyLife helicopter went down in a remote field about halfway through its planned 50-mile trip. But it wasn’t clear what role weather played in the crash.
Marco was raised in Naco and graduated from Bisbee High School before joing the Navy and becoming a registered nurse. Marco continued his career in the Navy reserves while he went on to become a critical care flight nurse for a Fresno hospital. Marco was a compassionate and dedicated man who loved his family, his friends, and his job, and he was always up for a challenge. The Sheriff’s office reports that Marco leaves his two children, father, step-mother, sisters, brother, neices, nephews and others behind.
His family is from Naco Arizona where his father and brother own and operate a construction business, one sister graduated from the University of Arizona and is living/working in the same town as Marco, another sister was an intern with the Sheriff’s Office, and his big sister was the Records Supervisor with the Sheriff’s Office for many years before moving to Washington.
The Sheriff’s Office asks that the public take “a moment to say a prayer for the victims in this accident and for the families who now have to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives and try to move forward without the guiding light that was Marco Lopez.”