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Violent crash at middle school results in minor injuries

By Bob Albrecht
Published: June 3, 2010, 12:00am
2 Photos
A spectacular crash in the parking lot at Shahala Middle School caused significant damage to four cars, but caused only minor injuries to the driver and three others.
A spectacular crash in the parking lot at Shahala Middle School caused significant damage to four cars, but caused only minor injuries to the driver and three others. Photo Gallery

Rotating a cracked, blood-stained wedding ring between her battered fingers, Shaleign Mabry couldn’t take her eyes off the crash that demolished her car but somehow spared her life and the lives of her two boys.

Mabry was sitting in the front seat of her Oldsmobile sedan when two vehicles, pushed by an out-of-control pickup truck, slammed into her.

“Thank God for car seats,” she said.

The driver of the Toyota pickup was taken to Southwest Washington Medical Center after the spectacular Thursday morning collision in the parking lot at Shahala Middle School, 601 S.E. 192nd Ave. Samuel R. Shimpach, 18, suffered minor injuries, according to a Vancouver Police Department news bulletin.

The incident, which occurred at 10:25 a.m., left the maroon pickup standing on its nose atop the wreckage of a black Volkswagen Beetle.

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The truck apparently T-boned the parked Volkswagen and pushed it across two empty spaces into a parked red Toyota Camry. Then all three vehicles slammed into Mabry’s maroon Oldsmobile, which was parked an additional space away.

The four-vehicles-turned-one came to rest near a tree inside a landscaped plot.

The spare tire from the pickup came loose and flew 40 feet in the air, striking and damaging a parked van.

“Based on witness statements and a preliminary investigation, excessive speed appears to be a direct contributor to the collision,” according to a press release issued by Sgt. Patrick Johns.

It remains unknown whether drugs or alcohol played a role.

Mabry and her sons were inside the Oldsmobile when she heard the truck’s engine roar and looked up to see three vehicles come crashing into her door.

Mabry’s sons, Mason, 4 months, and Carter, 2, were examined by firefighters. Remarkably, they suffered nary a scratch.

The 26-year-old mom walked around the parking lot with a limp after the crash, staring in disbelief at the mangled mess that would have been a reasonable sight in nothing other than a monster truck arena. Multicolored blankets spilled out of Mabry’s car. Shattered glass glinted off the asphalt in the midday light.

Mabry sustained cuts to her fingers and a scratch on her head.

“I’m just thankful those cars were there or we would have been dead,” she said.

The Vancouver woman said she had just arrived at Fisher Basin Community Park, located adjacent to the school. She was meeting a friend for a play date.

She said she had exited the car, but climbed back inside to pay a bill using her cell phone.

Then she heard the truck engine growl, louder and louder.

“It jumped the curb, slammed into the bug and then the cars slammed into me,” Mabry said.

She climbed out of the passenger door and checked on her sons. She said she sobbed, but her sons didn’t.

“My son said, ‘Mommy, car. Mommy, car,’ ” Mabry recounted.

The lot shared by the school and the park sits about half a football field from 192nd Avenue. A concrete island sits at the edge, its slope serving as something of a ramp for the truck that was described as traveling at a “high rate of speed.” It “skewered” the Volkswagen, said Jim Flaherty, a Vancouver Fire Department spokesman.

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“Absolutely one of the biggest impacts I’ve ever seen,” Flaherty added.

He marveled at the truck tire so clearly visible inside the shell of the Volkswagen. He couldn’t help but think of all the ways the stunning wreck could have been worse.

Despite the carnage, he said, injuries were minor. The parents playing with their children at the park weren’t harmed. Students and teachers who use the private road when they enter and leave the building weren’t caught in the truck’s path. Bicyclists riding through the area weren’t struck by the flying tire.

“This was a miracle,” he said. “No one could have been luckier today.”

Save for Shimpach, the truck’s driver, who could face charges pending the results of the Vancouver police investigation. But for him, too, it was shocking his injuries weren’t more severe, emergency responders said.

School officials made alternative busing arrangements for students, preserving at least a small bubble around the crash site. Members of the police department’s traffic unit closed one lane of the private road that winds into the school.

Shortly after the crash, onlookers huddled around the red police tape used to cordon off the parking lot, snapping pictures of the wreckage with cell phones.

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