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Woman, grandson airlifted to Jackson hospital |
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Sunday, 12 July 2009 |
 Brian Hawkins/SDN Four people were injured when a gray and white Ford F-150 pickup collided head-on with a blue Chevrolet Avalanche on Old Highway 25 South in the Deerfield area just inside the Starkville city limits late Friday night. Two of the victims were airlifted to a Jackson hospital. By BRIAN HAWKINS
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Four people were injured in a head-on collision between two pickups Friday night and two of the victims — a woman and her 3-year-old grandson — were airlifted to a Jackson hospital for treatment of serious injuries.
The crash occurred around 9 p.m. Friday night on Old Highway 25 in the Deerfield area just inside the southernmost Starkville city limits.
A dark Chevrolet Avalanche driven by Amanda Dancer with her mother, Lydian Cunningham, as a passenger collided with a gray and white Ford F-150 pickup driven Gladys Wiley with her three-year-old grandson, Camden Shurden, in a child safety seat in the front seat.
Wiley and Shurden, who both suffered head trauma and multiple broken bones, were transported to Oktibbeha County Hospital, where they were stabilized for transfer by helicopter to the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson for more intensive medical treatment of their injuries.
Information on their medical conditions was not available Saturday night.
Dancer and Cunningham were treated at OCH and released. Information on the specific nature of their injuries was could not be obtained Saturday.
A woman living in a mobile home park in the Deerfield area where the accident occurred heard the crash and immediately called E-911 operators.
The woman, who asked not to be identified, said she initially approached the F-150 and spoke to Wiley.
“I told her my name and asked her what her name was and if she could hear me, and she said, ‘Yes,’” the woman said.
Shurden was buckled into a child safety seat, but Starkville Police Department officials said they are continuing to investigate whether the safety seat was properly buckled in and whether Wiley was wearing her seat belt, as well as whether Dancer and Cunningham were wearing theirs.
The first SPD officers arriving on the scene found Shurden lying against the buckled hood of the pickup after having been thrown into the windshield by the force of the crash impact. The windshield itself was buckled and had broken on the passenger side.
“That little boy was screaming and blood was all down the side of that pickup,” said the woman who reported the crash. “He looked like he was hurt pretty bad.”
Dancer and Cunningham were seen walking around near the accident scene shortly after the crash, though both were taken by ambulance to OCH shortly after the crash.
“One of the ladies came over and sat down in a chair someone brought out for her, and she looked as if she was going to be sick. She may have been going into shock,” said the woman who reported the crash.
Both pickups were totaled, their front ends crumpled on impact and their windshields buckled and broken.
Both had to be towed from the scene, and responding Starkville firefighters had to cleanup the fuel, motor oil and other vehicular fluids that had leaked onto the road before Old Highway 25 could be reopened to traffic late Friday night.
The roadway was closed for about an hour and a half in both directions, creating some backup in traffic. The cause of the crash remains under investigation.
Sgt. Shawn Word, one of multiple SPD accident reconstruction investigators who responded to the crash Friday night, urged local motorists to buckle their seat belts and to ensure that child safety seats are properly fastened into the cars and that children are buckled into the seats properly.
“You never know when you might have a car accident, so seat belts should always be worn and children placed in safety seats,” Word said on Saturday.
Oktibbeha County sheriff’s deputies, Mississippi Highway Patrol troopers and engine companies from Starkville Fire Department station Nos. 2 and 4 responded to the scene of the crash.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 13 July 2009 )
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