When Team Five stepped into the rotation for the Fort Wayne-Allen County Crash Team on Aug. 7, Kara Klinker was still alive, her unborn baby girl still growing inside her.
Also alive were Barbara R. Schmucker and Matthew J. Miller.
When the seven officers from the Fort Wayne, Allen County and New Haven police departments signed off Friday night, those teens were dead, all killed in car crashes.
In all, accidents on Allen County roads claimed nine lives in eight days – a number that surpasses any in recent memory and one that takes a toll on police officers, nurses, first responders and coroners – the people whose job it is to clean up the aftermath of the wrecks.
The tragic spate of accidents has brought the number of Allen County traffic deaths for the year to 23 by mid-August, just two short of the total recorded in all of 2008, according to figures provided by the coroner’s office. This puts 2009 on pace to reverse a downward trend in vehicle fatalities and reach a five-year high.
“Even in my 31 years of law enforcement, I can’t recall any other time when we’ve had this many traffic fatalities at one time,” Deputy Coroner Patt Kite said.
The staff at Parkview Hospital’s trauma center, which specializes in keeping severely injured victims alive, has been taken aback by the amount of death last week brought, said Lisa Hollister, trauma care coordinator and nurse.
“We are wondering what’s creating such major trauma in people,” she said.
And the answer isn’t so easy. There’s no thread that connects 14-year-old Zamesha Fields, who died Thursday after she fell off the back of her mother’s sport utility vehicle the week before, to Glenith Childers, 51, who died last Sunday after he crashed his moped into a telephone pole the night before.
One of the deaths didn’t involve a motor vehicle. Nine-year-old Steven Lengacher died Aug. 6 when he fell off a horse-drawn cart near Grabill. The hay wagon being pulled behind the cart ran over the boy, killing him.
It was unclear whether Lengacher was counted as a traffic death since the accident involved a horse-drawn vehicle.
“There’s no common ground,” Kite said. “There’s no way to tie these crashes together.”
The Aug. 8 crash that claimed four lives at Lima Road and Coliseum Boulevard was especially rare and deadly, said the FACT Team coordinator, Fort Wayne police Lt. Tony Maze.
Kite can remember only one other crash that killed as many.
“The numbers are very unfortunate,” Maze said.
The crash occurred when a car turned left in front of the Christian band MercyMe’s tour bus just hours after a concert at Parkview Field.
The FACT Team is designed to assemble police officers to meticulously document and investigate every fatal or near-fatal crash. The officers on the team have full-time positions, usually as patrol officers, and respond whenever the crashes occur – even in the middle of the night.
One group of officers, Team Five, handled the Lima and Coliseum crash; the accident on West State Boulevard on Tuesday in which 57-year-old Darrell Saylor backed into his brother Donald, killing him; and Wednesday night’s rollover crash that claimed Matthew Miller’s life.
The only solution to this uptick in deaths that Kite can see is increasing education for drivers in the hopes of preventing further fatalities – common sense, mostly.
“Wear a seat belt, don’t be distracted, watch your speed and watch out for the other guy,” Kite warned.
