Trooper Pilot Dietsch and Trooper Stanley Gerling were killed Friday, June 30, 1989, in an airplane accident while searching for an elderly man who had wandered off. 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 Pilot Dietsch had served with the Iowa State Patrol for 6 years. He was 30 years old.

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