Medical examiner says mom, son killed by tree in windstorm

BELLEVUE — The King County Medical Examiner’s Office on Tuesday released the names of the two people killed when Sunday’s windstorm knocked a tree down on to their car.

The medical examiner determined both died from multiple blunt force injuries, the Seattle Times reported. Their deaths were ruled an accident.

Camille Martlin, 59, and her son Max Martlin, 22, lived together in the Bellevue house where Camille grew up. They loved to paddleboard and hike together, often with their dogs, a pit bull rescue named Pebbles and her small-breed companion, Smokey, according to friends and family.

They had gone to Preston to pick up pumpkins and were on their way home when a huge tree crashed on to their white sedan, killing them both, according to Max’s father and King County Sheriff’s Sgt. Tim Meyer.

The tree measured 8 feet (2.4 meters) in circumference at its base, Meyer said. The two were traveling along Preston-Fall City Road Southeast, a densely forested roadway that connects Interstate 90 to Fall City, when the tree landed across the car.

“It was truly a collision of inches and that it would take a mother and son is tragic,” Meyer said. “For that tree to hit at that moment is truly a freak incident.”