LUVERNE (AP) - A sport utility vehicle crashed in the middle of a Steele County cornfield, injuring three people who were found after a three-hour search on the ground and in the air, authorities say.

Sheriff Wayne Beckman said one of the victims used a cell phone to call for help but was not able to give an exact location of the crash early Friday.

"The 911 call, for some reason, hit the State Radio tower, and the initial call went into State Radio (in Bismarck) and was very broken up, very hard to hear," Beckman said. The woman who made the call said her cell phone went dead afterward, he said.

"They rolled their SUV out here, right down a township road that's not used, and right in the middle of a corn field - very hard to see," the sheriff said. "Nobody would have come across this road so if they had walked out, it would have been quite a while before we found them."

About 30 sheriff's deputies, Highway Patrol troopers and a U.S. Border Patrol helicopter started searching about 4 a.m., Friday. Firefighters and emergency workers as well as area residents joined in the search.

Beckman said a passerby spotted the crash about 7 a.m., and reported it to workers at a nearby pipeline station.

Two of the injured were taken to Cooperstown medical center. Another was flown to a Fargo hospital. The names of the two women and a man were not immediately released.

Beckman said the cause of the crash is under investigation.

It was the second case in a week involving an intensive search for a crash victim who was lost. In Grand Forks County, Barbara Ann Hoffarth of Devils Lake called for help before her cell phone went dead Tuesday, saying she had been lost since Sunday night. Authorities found her in her car in a drainage ditch near Larimore.