Bend police investigate crash that killed two
Two Bend-area women were killed Sunday morning when the speeding car driven by one failed to stop at a stop sign and crashed into the other’s SUV at a southeast Bend intersection, police said Sunday.
Lt. Kurt Koester said the two drivers, Erica Lynn Blackwell, 41, and Carla Jean Conners 55, died at the scene of the crash, which occurred around 7:45 a.m. at the intersection of Southeast Murphy and Brosterhous roads. There no passengers in either car, he added.
An initial investigation found that Blackwell was driving her silver four-door 2006 Mercedes “at a high rate of speed” eastbound on Murphy Road and did not stop at the stop sign for Brosterhous Road, Koester said.
Blackwell’s car struck the driver’s door area of Conners’ silver 2011 Nissan SUV, which was heading north on Brosterhous, the lieutenant said.
Anyone who saw either vehicle before the crash was asked to contact Bend police through Deschutes County dispatchers at their non-emergency number, 541-693-6911.
The major investigation, including crash reconstruction, shut the intersection for about eight hours, until around 4 p.m. Drivers were urged to avoid the area and use alternate routes.
Murphy has a stop sign and is a T-intersection at Brosterhous Road, though the road is being extended eastward to 15th Street. The two cars’ wreckage ended up in the construction zone east of the intersection.
It was the third double-fatal crash in Oregon over the holiday weekend and the second in the Bend area.
Two men were killed in a head-on crash late Friday afternoon on the Powell Butte Highway northeast of Bend. Two people were killed Friday evening in a three-vehicle crash on Highway 20 just east of Albany.
Sgt. Clint Burleigh told NewsChannel 21 Monday the weekend crash was still under investigation.
“In every crash, we’re looking into what other factors might be involved,” Burley said. “Is it an engineering factor, an environmental factor? Are there, were either occupant under the influence of intoxicants? We have to look at everything.”
In 2007, Blackwell was arrested on DUII charges after smashing into a car, a cable box, a tree and a fishing boat. Her then 7-year old son was in the car at the time. No one was injured in that incident.
