Trooper Stanley E. Gerling

Stanley E. Gerling

Trooper Stanley Gerling and Trooper Pilot Lance Dietsch were killed in an airplane crash while searching for an elderly man who had wandered away from a nursing home near U.S. Highway 6 west of Atlantic, Iowa.

They were about to call off the search when the troopers located him in a soybean field. They began to circle the area when the plane made a sudden turn and crashed vertically into the ground.

Trooper Gerling had served with the Iowa State Patrol for one year. He was survived by his wife and two children