Chinle paramedic dies in plane crash

By Karen Francis
Staff writer

CHINLE — A 32-year-old Chinle man died when the Eagle Air Med plane he was riding in crashed in southern Colorado on Thursday.

Funeral services for Dana Dedman, a flight paramedic with Eagle Air Med, will be held at the Chinle Catholic Church on Friday. He leaves behind wife Vangie Yazzie, daughter Danielle Dedman, 3, and two step-daughters Mallory, 16, and Mariah Gatewood, 9. Yazzie, who is pregnant with Dedman’s child, is due in December.

Yazzie said that her husband loved his work. He began his career as a volunteer fire fighter for the Chinle fire department and eventually became an emergency medical technician and paramedic.

“He loved working with the community,” Yazzie said. “He wanted to help people.”

Dedman, a 1993 graduate of Chinle High School, went to school in Albuquerque to get his paramedic certificate. He also worked with the Chinle ambulance service.

“He was a very nice, strong man,” Yazzie said. “He was just so positive.”

Yazzie got the phone call at 4 a.m. on Friday that the company had lost contact with the plane her husband was on.

“We had our hopes, thinking maybe the radio just went out or they landed somewhere,” she said.

Around 2:30 p.m. she received word that the plane had crashed and there were no survivors from the flight.

Dedman was on a twin-engine Beech King Air C-90A headed for Alamosa, Colo., with pilot Ric Miller, 46, of Wenatchee, Wash., and flight nurse Ronnie Helton, 25, of Birmingham, Ala. The plane departed from the Chinle Comprehensive Health Care Facility to pick up a patient on Thursday at 10:35 p.m. and was expected to arrive at its destination at 11:30 p.m.

When the plane did not arrive by 11:45 p.m. Eagle Air Med began searching for the crew and suspended all other flights. The wreckage was found Friday near Charley’s Peak.

The Associated Press reported that Eagle Air Med said that Miller had no record of accidents or violations in 22 years of flying. It also said that Miller made no distress calls to the company communications center.

Miller had more 12,000 hours of logged flight time, including 2,400 hours with the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve.

Helton had been an intensive care nurse for three years.

Dedman had been employed with the company for more than two years, Eagle Air Med said.

The company said its pilots receive annual training and crews are briefed on the weather each morning. Eagle Air Med, based out of Blanding, Utah, said that this is the company’s first fatal accident.

The Navajo Area Indian Health Services contracts flights from five providers, including Eagle Air Med. Officials said that there were more than 1,000 such flights contracted last year and 1,700 flights projected for 2007. The flights are most often necessary when the IHS facilities do not have specialized equipment to treat patients.

Navajo Nation Council Delegate for Chinle Harry Claw said that the community was in shock upon learning of the fatal accident.

“When they first heard about it, the first comment was ‘Why? How did this happen?’” Claw said. “Everyone is in shock. They are in mourning.”

The Council’s Health and Social Services Committee released a statement extending sympathy and appreciation to the families of Dedman, Miller and Helton.

“These three medical professionals gave their lives in the line of duty while providing the much needed medical services to those in need and of course our Navajo people.

They chose this career even though they knew the risk involved each time they got on that airplane,” the committee stated.

“To the Dedman family, Helton family and Miller family, we would like to extend our sympathy and say a big thank you for allowing your loved ones to serve the people of the Chinle community, as well as the entire Navajo Nation.

“The entire Navajo Nation mourns with you at this hardest time in your life,” the committee stated.