No deaths in horrific Vernon car crash

"How somebody lived, I don't know"

VERNON – It was one of the ugliest car crashes a Vernon police officer has seen in his entire career, yet somehow, nobody died.

Cpl. Gerry Kovaks says the investigation into a two vehicle accident that left a PT Cruiser and a Mazda crushed on Highway 97 last week is ongoing, and could take months to conclude. The crash involved a 38-year-old woman and a 20-year-old man, both from Vernon. According to police, the woman is still in intensive care at Kelowna General Hospital.

"I was stationed on the Trans Canada Highway for eight and a half years,” Kovaks says. “I've seen a lot of horrific accidents… that one as far as a head-on crunch at that kind of speed with tremendous damage, how somebody lived, I don't know.”

A crash analyst will reconstruct the accident and sequence of events leading up to it to determine if any criminality was involved. 

“We need to speak to all the people that saw it,” Kovaks says. “There’s people from both sides of that accident scene that saw what happened.”

It could be three months before the analyst’s report is available due to the complexity of the accident.

“There was a lady’s life who obviously was held in the balance for several days,” Kovaks says. “It’s quite a story.”

To contact the reporter for this story, email Charlotte Helston at chelston@infotelnews.ca, call (250)309-5230 or tweet @charhelston.