ALSO READ: 9 Young People Hurt In Head-On Collision Outside Cokeville
Kenny Petersen thought the commotion Wednesday night came from the cats milling around on his back porch, getting into something again. Then he heard sirens and saw flashing lights.
Fifty yards away, a pickup and an SUV had collided on state Highway 32, just outside the small Western Wyoming town of Cokeville. Petersen ran out of his house and wandered up to the crash site where he encountered a large triage scene.
Several shell-shocked young people stood around, dazed, repeating the same stories. Just-arriving EMTs scurried to the wounded, who were scattered sitting or lying on the ground. The voice of a girl trickled out from the cab of a smashed Toyota Highlander, where she was pinned.
“It certainly looked like somebody should have been killed or injured,” Kenny said.
Incredibly, no one died in the harrowing crash, Lincoln County Sheriff M. Shane Johnson told Cowboy State Daily. Nine high-school age kids, split into two cars, all survived the head-on collision, though some are recovering from serious injuries.
Given the odds involving so many kids and the smashed-in conditions of both vehicles, Petersen and his wife, Andra, were grateful no one was killed.
“It’s 100% a miracle,” Andra Petersen said.
Community Rallies
Words of heavenly praise circulated Thursday on Facebook, as members of Cokeville, a heavily LDS population of nearly 500 residents, voiced their gratitude that the town’s sons and daughters had all survived.
“I don't know what happened,” one woman wrote in a comment to Cowboy State Daily’s Facebook page, “but if they are Cokeville kids, they are my kids.”
Andra Petersen knew them all.
The Petersens have put all eight of their children through Cokeville HIgh School, the last of whom recently graduated. Andra has directed a musical production in the community in which nearly all the kids have participated.
As Kenny Petersen surveyed the scene Wednesday night, he spoke to some of the teens, including the young driver of the Highlander who had been trapped in the driver’s seat for about an hour while firefighters extricated her.
The girl told Kenny that she didn’t remember much except swerving around the bend. The next thing she recalled were the sirens and lights from the ambulances.
“She thinks she probably blacked out,” Kenny said.
Kenny and the Petersens’ daughter, a nursing student, combed through the crowd to see if anyone needed help. One boy with an injured eye was by himself, standing in the cold. They brought him home to warm up.
“I’m scared,” Andra Petersen said the boy told her.
Small Town
The two vehicles were coming from different directions and activities, the Petersens said. One was full of teens returning from practice for the Celebration Show Choir, a school singing group.
Parents quickly amassed at the scene, spreading out in different directions toward the hospitals their children had been sent to. Among the most serious injuries the kids suffered were a broken pelvis, nose and fractures along one youth’s back, the Petersens said.
Serious injuries, but recoverable ones.
As medical personnel treated the wounded, parents and other members of the local church began praying for the health of the injured Wednesday night, sending blessings of healing to each of the kids involved.
“It’s a small community,” Kenny Petersen said. “We pretty much know everybody.”
Justin George can be reached at justin@cowboystatedaily.com.
