After a week of hoping for a miracle, the worst fears of an Alexandra family were realised when the wreckage of a helicopter missing in Papua New Guinea was found yesterday with the bodies of the three crew inside.
Helicopter pilot Antony Annan, 49, formerly of Alexandra, and two Australian colleagues were found dead in their Bell 206 helicopter near the Purari River. The wreckage indicated a crash landing.
"We've been waiting and hoping they might be okay ... and you hope maybe, somehow, they'd survived, but now we've been told all three are gone," said Mr Annan's brother-in-law, Ken Lloyd, of Alexandra.
"Our only consolation is that their bodies have been found ... Finding them was important to us."
Mr Annan's brother Matthew, also a pilot, died in a top-dressing plane crash in Australia in 1998, aged 28.