Paulina Hwy. crash critically injures Eugene woman
A pickup truck left SE Paulina Highway about three miles east of Paulina and rolled several times Sunday afternoon, injuring two of the three people inside, one critically, Crook County sheriff’s deputies said.
Deputies were dispatched around 2:22 p.m. on initial reports that indicated a truck carrying three people had crashed down an embankment, said Deputy Mitch Madden. The reports also indicated a female passenger was trapped in the pickup, unconscious and having difficulty breathing, he said.
As Crook County Fire and Rescue medics responded to the crash, they asked that a Life Flight helicopter also be activated, due to the remote location and degree of injury, Madden said.
The deputies and medics arrived to find a gray Nissan Frontier on the north side of the highway and Life Flight already on scene, working to free the trapped passenger, identified as Kelsi Tooley, 28, of Eugene, Madden said.
She was flown to St. Charles-Bend, where a nursing supervisor said she remained in critical condition Monday evening.
The driver, Timothy Johnson, 55, of Terrebonne, later also was flown by an AirLink helicopter to the Bend hospital, where he was treated for his injuries and released, the nursing supervisor said.
The other passenger, Tooley’s husband Joshua Tooley, 27, also of Eugene, was taken to the hospital by private vehicle.
Madden said an investigation found that Johnson failed to safely negotiate a corner and his pickup left the road. After several attempts to bring the truck back onto the highway, he lost control and it rolled several times.
Johnson and Joshua Tooley were wearing their seat belts, Madden said, but Kelsi Tooley was lying with her back against the right rear passenger door, her legs and feet extended across the seat, and because of that was not wearing her seat belt properly.
Sgt. Jim Chapman said the investigation pointed to driver error as the cause of the crash.
Also assisting at the scene were Active Towing and several bystanders, Madden said.
