Priest Accident Witnessed By Motorist
By Joseph Friedrichs, 7-03-07
Almost immediately after a Jesuit priest drove his car off a highway and down an embankment in a wooded area of Highway 26 west of Portland, a witness who saw the accident called 911 and gave authorities a pinpoint location where the car left the roadway, according to Oregon State Police.
But crews sent to the scene couldn’t locate the accident scene and called off the search, said Gregg Hastings, public information officer for the state police. It wasn’t until nearly three weeks after the witness’ call and one day after the bodies of David Schwartz, a priest from Garden Grove, and his friend Cheryl Gibbs were pulled from the wreckage, that authorities connected the 911 call to their disappearance, Hastings said, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Schwartz’s family members, who spent weeks doing their own search, were distraught after hearing of the 911 call and wondered how Oregon authorities could have subsequently failed to review tape recordings of emergency calls in the middle of the far-reaching search for Schwartz and Gibbs, the Chronicle reported.
“It was 100 percent incompetence and negligence,’’ said Tom Mulligan, Schwartz’s brother-in-law, who spent two weeks and drove roughly 1,500 miles scouring Oregon for the missing duo. “We’re heartbroken and disappointed.’’
The Chronicle reported that the timeline coincides with the 911 call, which came in around 4:20 p.m. June 8. During the 911 call, a man, who identified himself as Doug, told the dispatcher that a red compact car had driven off Highway 26 about a quarter-mile west of milepost 26 and was not visible from the road. The witness said he didn’t know if anyone was hurt.
Hastings said the caller’s information could be “a model” for 911 callers, but because Schwartz’s car was hard to see from the roadway, emergency crews who responded to the scene, a wooded area heavy with brush, were unable to locate the wreckage, the Chronicle reported.
The missing car, a 2005 Toyota Corolla, was finally spotted Sunday afternoon by searchers in a Civil Air Patrol plane.
The 911 tapes also revealed confusion about which emergency response team had jurisdiction over the accident scene.
After listening to the tape and seeing the wreckage on the side of the road Sunday, Mulligan said he can’t understand how authorities could have possibly missed his brother-in-law’s car.
He compared the incident to the troubled search for the Kim family last November. The San Francisco family got lost on their way home from a Thanksgiving trip and were stranded with their car for more than a week. Rescuers eventually found Kati Kim and her two daughters with the car, but James Kim died after he tried to hike out to get help for his family. Authorities were widely criticized for what many believe was a botched search and the governor promised to tighten search and rescue operations.
“This is 10 times worse than the Kim case,’’ Mulligan said, as reported by the Chronicle. “They knew exactly where (Gibbs and Schwartz) were and no one could find them.”
Bottom line, if you get lost or stuck off road in Oregon you're screwed. It's still Indian territory in many ways.
ReplyDeleteNice article Bob!