MARTY, Minn. _ A team of investigators is on its way to central Minnesota to determine what caused a National Guard helicopter to crash in a Stearns County field Thursday, killing three soldiers.
The UH-60 Black Hawk on a routine maintenance flight disappeared just after 2 p.m. after taking off from the Army Aviation Flight Facility near the St. Cloud airport. According to emergency dispatch audio from Stearns County, the helicopter's crew sent a mayday alert nine minutes after takeoff.
Local and state emergency workers swarmed the area in an intensive search. As dusk fell, a Minnesota a Minnesota State Patrol helicopter equipped with thermal imaging cameras and the Minnesota Aviation Rescue Team, which includes St. Paul firefighters, spotted the wreckage on the wooded edge of a field south of Cold Spring and about 16 miles southwest of St. Cloud.
On Friday, Gov. Tim Walz ordered flags be flown at half-staff until Monday in honor of the soldiers. Meanwhile, local residents brought an American flag to the crash site.
"Kind of a sad, sad day," said John Wicker, a farmer and member of the local town board. "And there's nothing you can do. There is nothing anybody can do that would have changed the outcome."
Wicker said he heard that the bodies of the victims were removed Friday morning. He was hoping to quickly establish an honor guard before that happened, but instead he and his son took the flag to the site and left it with a Stearns County Sheriff's deputy.
The Black Hawk fell into a farmer's field here not far from the unincorporated town of Marty, where a tight-knit farming community of fourth- and fifth-generation families know each other well, and where news travels quickly, Wicker said.
A friend of Wicker's from the Rockville Fire and Rescue company called him Thursday to ask if he had heard anything. A helicopter had gone missing, the man said, and it was pinging from a site close to Wicker's farm. Wicker was surprised _ he had been at the farm but hadn't heard anything.
He said he hopped onto his snowmobile and roared off in search of the Black Hawk.
He crisscrossed a local road several times without realizing that the crash site was visible from the road near Frank and Shelly Krippner's place. He said he wasn't the only one who missed it _ he said it seemed like "hundreds" of emergency vehicles were traveling up and down the gravel road searching, but the wreckage blended in almost perfectly with a line of trees topping a ridge.
"You would think there would be smoke but there wasn't," Wicker said.
As more farmers and locals joined the ground search on snowmobile and four-wheelers, aircraft overhead circled in a tightly defined space, Wicker said.
"It was like 'Good God!' there was so many aircraft in the skies zigzagging around," he said.
Several planes circled at higher elevations, while helicopters hovered low over farmer's fields.
About 3:35 p.m. after more than an hour of searching, a State Patrol helicopter hovered just 2 to 3 feet off the ground near a stand of trees at the Krippner farm just up the road from Wicker's farm.
Wicker scooted up to the ridge and saw the wreckage. It was clear no one had survived, he said.
"You just knew what it was," he said.
Officials shooed Wicker away as emergency vehicles converged. Looking at the crash site a day later, Wicker shook his head.
"You just kind of wonder what happened," he said. "Fifty feet to the south and they would have been in an empty field."
Wicker said he spoke to the Krippners and they told him that Shelly Krippner heard the crash but didn't realize what it was.
"She heard a bang," said Wicker. "It was loud."
But they didn't see anything unusual. The helicopter apparently did not burn, so there was no smoke.
"She got into her car and went to work and didn't know that 800 feet up the hill was a helicopter," Wicker said. "It was crazy, just crazy."
It's not unusual to see Black Hawks flying low through the area, he said. Local residents know there's a maintenance facility in nearby St. Cloud, and the helicopter pilots sometimes fly low over the area and perform maneuvers.
"There's more than one time I've thought, 'Is that thing all right?'" Wicker said. "I'm sure they're just testing them out, flying low or whatever," he said.
The soldiers paid the ultimate price, said a somber Walz as he announced the deaths Thursday night during a news conference held near the crash site.
"My heart breaks for all the families, the friends and fellow soldiers," said Walz, who has a long personal history with the National Guard, having served for 24 years. "The coming days will be dark and difficult."
As of Friday, the National Guard officials had not released the names of the soldiers who were killed.
"Our Minnesota National Guard family is devastated by the deaths of these soldiers," said Maj. Gen. Jon Jensen, adjutant general of the Minnesota National Guard. "Our priority right now is ensuring that our families are taken care of."
At least two people saw the helicopter go down, according to the emergency dispatch audio, which also said there was no tracking beacon aboard the aircraft.
The witnesses reported that "it went down hard," one dispatcher said.
Searchers estimated that the helicopter would have traveled six to 10 miles in the minutes since leaving the airport.
"My heart is definitely with family and loved ones of those who have lost people today," St. Paul deputy fire chief Roy Mokosso said. "Any loss of life is extremely tragic _ especially at home and around the holiday season. Just knowing they were service members, those individuals were probably young, in the prime of their lives and answering a greater call."
Condolences have streamed across social media and Minnesota political leaders have offered tributes to the soldiers "who paid the ultimate price."
"We are heartbroken and devastated by the loss of three heroic Minnesotans," said Minnesota Republican state Rep. Bob Dettmer, a 25-year Army Reserve veteran. "We also are tremendously grateful for our first responders who rushed to the crash site from the region and other parts of the state."
Said Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka: "All Minnesotans are united in grief for our National Guard members who perished today. Today's accident reminds us of the dangerous job we ask them to do on a daily basis. No matter where they die, they are all heroes."
U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar also paid tribute to the soldiers. "Their service to our state and our nation will never be forgotten," she said in a written statement.
