Two survive precipitous drop

— Two women survived a wreck Tuesday, June 7, above Tick Hollow on U.S. Highway 62 in the same spot where another woman was killed in a one-vehicle wreck just a month ago.

Traffic was stalled for morethan an hour as emergency responders from several area agencies descended the steep embankment and pulled the two women to the roadway to transport them to the hospital.

Janis Boydston, 61, and Autumn Hicks, 13, both of Tulsa, were eastbound in their Jeep Cherokeewhen they ran off the roadway, careened over the embankment, ran through trees, over rocks and through a barbed-wire fence before coming to a rest at a sharp vertical angle on a rock bluff above a creek bed.

At the same location on May 10, just after 4 p.m. a woman was killed when her car went off the road and hit a tree. According to state police, she was texting while driving.

A Bentonville man, Leroy Witcher, was headed to Missouri when he was flagged down by other travelers on U.S. Highway 62 between Garfield and Gateway who saw the Jeep go over the embankment and flagged him down. Witchersaid he stopped, crawled down the steep slope and pulled Boydston and Hicks out of the vehicle.

“I was headed to Missouri to get my son and got flagged down,” Witchersaid. A construction worker, Witcher said he is has worked on emergency rescues in the past, most specifically after a tornado.

As emergency personnel from Northeast Benton County Volunteer Fire/ EMS arrived, Witcher continued to help, taking wire cutters down the steep hillside to cut the barbed wire fence and then a chain saw to remove trees to facilitate the medics pulling the patients on backboards in baskets up the hill.

Benton County Sheriff’s deputies Robert Crowe and Paul Bevilacqua held back traffic until being called upon to man the rope pulling up the patients. State trooper Jana Cordes andWitcher lent a hand as well.

Hicks said Boydston is her aunt. She said she didn’t really know what happened to cause the wreck.

Trooper Cordes said no citations were issued.

News, Pages 1 on 06/15/2011