{"id":448351,"date":"2026-08-30T21:56:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-30T21:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/448351\/"},"modified":"2026-08-30T21:56:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T21:56:12","slug":"3-bay-area-residents-among-4-killed-in-small-plane-crash-in-seldovia-alaska-state-troopers-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/448351\/","title":{"rendered":"3 Bay Area residents among 4 killed in small plane crash in Seldovia, Alaska, state troopers say"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three of the four victims who died in a plane in crash in Alaska this past Wednesday were from the Bay Area.<\/p>\n

The crash happened in the Seldovia Slough in Seldovia on August 26 just before 1:20 p.m., according to Alaska State Troopers.<\/p>\n

The victims have been identified as:<\/p>\n

Ronald Schmidt, 65, Lance Schmidt, 20, both from San Jose; and Daniel Simons, 82 of Los Gatos. It’s unclear how the victims were related.<\/p>\n

The pilot, Eric Middlebrook, 68, of Anchorage, Alaska, also died, officials added.<\/p>\n

\"In<\/p>\n

In this Sept. 4, 2019, photo provided by the City of Seldovia, Alaska, shows the condition of the community’s dam as it struggles with a severe water shortage.<\/p>\n

Cassidi Cameron\/City of Seldovia via AP<\/p>\n

A preliminary investigation determined that a Piper PA-24 was heading to Seldovia from Merrill Field Airport in Anchorage before crashing into the water, Alaskan state troopers said.<\/p>\n

At around 6:30 p.m. local time Wednesday, after the tide level dropped, troopers were able to remove the four victims from inside the small plane.<\/p>\n

Alaska State Troopers said the victims’ bodies were sent to the State Medical Examiner’s Office for autopsy.<\/p>\n

Their next of kin have been identified.<\/p>\n

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the cause of the crash.<\/p>\n

We will have more on ABC7 Eyewitness News at 5 p.m.<\/p>\n


<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2026 KGO-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three of the four victims who died in a plane in crash in Alaska this past Wednesday were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448352,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[177510,88,90,89],"class_list":["post-448351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-177510","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}