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PAGE, Ariz. (AP) -- Family, friends and the National Park Service are mourning the deaths of two off-duty law enforcement officers who were killed in the crash of a small plane in southern Utah.
Brent McGinn, 49, and Laurie Axelsen, 41, were on a scouting trip for an upcoming elk hunt when their plane was reported overdue Saturday. Searchers found the wreckage hours later in a rugged area known as Deep Creek on Mount Dutton in the Dixie National Forest. Both occupants were dead at the scene.
McGinn and Axelsen, both assigned to the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area along the Arizona-Utah border, were returning from Bryce Canyon, where they had met friends for the scouting trip.
"When you think about what rangers do every day and the frequency with which they put themselves in harm's way for the protection of visitors and park resources, it is a bitter irony that a recreational outing on a day away from work took the lives of two of our law enforcement rangers," Glen Canyon Acting Superintendent Kym Hall said in a statement released Sunday.
McGinn, the chief ranger at Glen Canyon, had worked at the national recreation area for almost three years. From Duluth, Minn., he had started his career with the National Park Service as a technician at Apostle Islands National Lakeshore in 1980. He had also worked at Bryce Canyon and Zion national parks and Canaveral National Seashore.
McGinn is survived by his parents and three siblings.
Axelsen had worked at Glen Canyon for more than eight years. A native of Great Falls, Mont., she started with the Park Service as a ranger at Mount Rainier National Park in 1989 and went on to work at Olympic, Big Bend and Shenandoah national parks.
She is survived by her parents and a brother.
Hall described McGinn and Axelsen as well-known and passionate people, saying their loss will leave a "tremendous hole in our organization."
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
