Mother and son are dead after I-5 crash near Harrisburg, OR; trooper rescues girl, 5

http://registerguard.com/rg/news/lo...-5-crash-oregon-state-police-reports.html.csp

Update: Mother and son are dead after I-5 crash near Harrisburg; trooper rescues girl, 5, who is taken to RiverBend



Emergency personnel work at the scene of an accident at a rest area north of Eugene on Wednesday evening after two people were killed and a child injured when a motor home hit the back of a parked tractor-trailer rig. (Christian Hill/The Register-Guard)


By Christian Hill

The Register-Guard

Feb. 25, 2016

HARRISBURG — On Wednesday afternoon, Sergio Valente was asleep in the tractor-trailer rig he’d parked on the shoulder of the Interstate 5 offramp to the rest area just south of Harrisburg.

He was minutes from the 4 p.m. wake-up call from his alarm clock, when he’d shortly resume his long drive to Fresno, Calif.

“Suddenly, I felt the truck move, and I woke up,” said Valente, 37.

Within moments, Oregon State Police Senior Trooper Eli Chambers, who just happened to be passing by the southbound Oak Grove Rest Area, would abruptly pull over and jump out of his police car, running to the tractor-trailer.

Chambers and Valente would be in the midst of a grim scene: the burning front half of a motor home with two dead adults — a man and a woman — pinned under the rear of the tractor-trailer.

“I went into shock,” Valente said. “I did not know what to do.”

Valente did the best he could. He grabbed a fire extinguisher and pointed it at the burning wreckage.

Meanwhile, Chambers saw the dead man, who was born in 1989, on the motor home’s rear passenger side. He called inside, and that’s when he heard the cries and screams of a 5-year-old girl, Sgt. Alan Gilbert, the patrol’s on-scene supervisor, would recount later.

Chambers broke out the side windows and was able to pull the girl from the burning wreckage, Gilbert said. Two witnesses assisted his efforts.

The girl was taken to Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend in Springfield with possible fractures, he said. She was listed in stable condition, he said.

The body of the female driver, who was born in 1947, would be pulled from the wreckage later.

The male passenger was the girl’s father, and the female driver was her grandmother, Gilbert said. The man was stationed with the Air Force near Omaha, Neb., and the woman lived in the Albany area, he said.

The adults’ names weren’t released Wednesday evening, pending notification of next of kin.

Chambers declined comment on his heroics when approached by a reporter at the scene.

Gilbert said the crash remains under investigation, but so far there are no leads as to why the motorhome veered into the rear of the tractor-trailer on the offramp. There was no indication that the driver attempted to brake before the crash, he said.

Valente, a commercial truck driver for six years, had parked along the shoulder at 6 a.m. after finding all the rest stop’s tractor-trailer stalls occupied. He was hauling large paper rolls from Port Townsend, Wash., and taking his 10-hour break.

It’s not uncommon for truck drivers to park their rigs on the shoulders of an offramp when all the parking stalls are claimed. Gilbert said Valente was not cited in the crash — but the driver said his conscience was bothering him.

For Valente, 37, of Corona, Calif., the scene stirred memories from two years earlier when he suffered a minor back injury after being rear-ended by a drunken driver while driving his personal car.

Valente, who was documenting the damage to the trailer, said he wonders what would have happened if he’d parked elsewhere, or drove down the interstate a little farther.

The motorhome may have crashed into a tree or a post, he said, but the two people inside, in all likelihood, would still be alive.