BIG COTTONWOOD CANYON, Utah, Aug. 17, 2019 (Gephardt Daily) — A Unified Police official has shared more information on the victims of a two-vehicle collision early Saturday morning in Big Cottonwood Canyon.
The victim who died at the scene was a 16-year-old girl who was sleeping in the bed of a pickup truck with her 44-year-old mother, Unified Police Detective Kevin Mallory told Gephardt Daily.
The mother remains in critical condition Saturday evening, Mallory said, adding that he believes mother and daughter are from Utah.
The four people who were in the sedan that hit the parked pickup are all men in their 30s, the detective said. As of Saturday evening, two men remain in critical condition and two are now listed as stable.
Mallory said he was not sure whether the four men in the sedan were from Utah. UPD officials also have recovered IDs of all four men, but are not sure which name goes with which patient, since some men are unconscious or have been in surgery and unable to talk.
Impairment is being investigated as a possible cause of the sedan driver losing control, Mallory said. That possibility is being investigated because of a bottle found in or near the car, and based on officer’s observations at the scene.
The accident happened at about 2:55 a.m. when the sedan went out of control, and drifted off the roadway before slamming into the parked truck, Mallory told Gephardt Daily early Saturday at the accident scene.
“In the back of that pickup in the bed were two occupants that were sleeping. The passenger car struck the back of that truck and hit those two individuals, and continued up an embankment on the side of the mountain, then came down and rolled onto its roof.”
The girl died at the scene, leaving officials with five other patients. The teen’s mother mother was in very critical condition when officers arrived.
Three medical helicopters were called to the scene to transfer patients to area hospitals. Two of the males were transported by ground ambulance.
Mallory said he expects to release the name of the teen victim within the next day, once all appropriate family notifications are made.
