Deputy Commissioner Claude Everett Swackhammer

Claude Everett Swackhammer

Deputy Commissioner Claude Swackhammer and Sergeant Robert Lee Bittick, of the Alaska State Troopers, were killed in an airplane accident in British Columbia, Canada, just north of Haines, Alaska.

Sergeant Bittick was piloting the department's Grumman Goose seaplane from Anchorage to Juneau when it crashed during into a mountainside during a snowstorm.

Deputy Commissioner Swackhammer had served with the Alaska State Troopers for 25 years and had been appointed by the governor to the Alaska Department of Public Safety. He is survived by his wife, two sons, and daughter.