QUILCENE — A 14-year-old girl remained in critical condition at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle on Monday for treatment of injuries received when a pickup truck overturned on her.
The unidentified girl had to be pulled out from beneath the truck as emergency responders lifted the vehicle, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office reported.
The incident occurred about 2:20 p.m. Sunday on a state Department of Natural Resources forest road near Quilcene.
The Sheriff’s Office described how the rollover occurred:
The pickup driver, an 18-year-old man whose name also wasn’t made available publicly by authorities, was driving the small truck in the timberland road with three teenaged passengers in the bed.
Traveling at a high rate of speed in reverse gear, the driver lost control and the truck slid backward into a ditch, causing it to overturn.
Two of the passengers were thrown from the overturning truck, but the pickup landed on top of the girl.
One of the passengers called 9-1-1 on a cellphone, and sheriff’s deputies and Jefferson County Fire District No. 2 personnel arrived to extricate the girl after she was trapped for nearly a half-hour.
She was flown to Harborview where she underwent emergency surgery later Sunday, according to a Sheriff’s Office spokesman.
The driver and two other passengers were taken to Jefferson Healthcare hospital and released.
Neither alcohol nor drugs is suspected to be a factor, but the driver might face criminal charges, the spokesman said.
