A Marine major from Belgrade is one of the nine people feared killed in a mid-air collision off the California Coast.

Major Samuel Leigh was 35, a 1992 graduate of Messalonskee High School in Oakland and a graduate of Norwich University in Vermont. The collision happened Thursday evening, and on Sunday, the military called off the search, saying it was a recovery operation instead of a search mission. The cause of the crash is unknown, but Leigh was the pilot flying the Marine Corps AH-1W Super Cobra, which collided with a Coast Guard C-130. A debris field was found near San Clemente Island, about 50 miles off the San Diego Coast, but so far no bodies have been located.