Interstate 90 car wreck results in fatality
<p>The Dodge Durango involved in a fatal rollover on Interstate 90 near Superior Wednesday is now at Carl's Towing.</p>
Mary-Anne James, a 22-yar-old from Seattle, was driving her boyfriend’s grandmother Teresa Jackson-Chun and seven children in a Dodge Durango on Interstate 90 near Superior at 8:10 a.m. Wednesday heading towards Great Falls when she began to veer into the median.
At the same time, students and several parents from Superior Schools were waiting for the bus just across from the highway.
“It was either inattentiveness or she just fell asleep,” Montana Highway Patrol Sergeant Roman Zylawy said. “They just drifted off on that straight stretch into the median, which is typical of falling asleep or reaching for your radio or whatever.”
When the Durango hit the gravel, Jackson-Chun told James to “just hold it straight” but according to Sergeant Zylawy the 22-year-old “just couldn’t resist” trying to get back on the road.
“When you panic, you just want to get back on the road as quickly as possible,” Sergeant Zylawy said. “In the dirt it’s one thing but then when that pavement it hooks up and that’s what started them rolling down the highway.”
None of the passengers in the Durango were wearing seatbelts, and eight of them were ejected from the vehicle as the car rolled down the highway.
According to Zylawy a 1-year-old infant was killed in the crash.
The Superior Volunteer Fire Department and Mineral Community Ambulance “quickly” responded to the scene of the accident.
A tow truck was immediately needed to pull up the vehicle due to the fact that one of the occupants was pinned underneath it.
“The foot was cut off and their was such a compression on her leg when it severed the foot that it wasn’t even bleeding,” Sergeant Zylawy said.
The pinned occupant was airlifted to Harbor View Hospital in Seattle. James had “a pretty serious neck and chest injury.” Sergeant Zylawy said that after the MHP learned that kids waiting for the bus witnessed the wreck, MHP Trooper Sean Smalley went by the school to inform the principal in case any of the students needed counseling.
“They saw first hand the chaos and the mayhem,” Sergeant Zylawy said.
Superior Volunteer Fire Chief John Woodland also held a critical stress debriefing for any emergency personnel on hand. The briefing enabled attendees to discuss their feelings regarding responding to the accident.