By Geoff Grammer
The New Mexican
SANTA FE, N.M. — A woman is dead and two others critically injured after a head-on collision with an emergency-transport vehicle on Interstate 25 early Tuesday morning.
Santa Fe Police Chief Aric Wheeler said the crash occurred after 2 a.m. on the northbound lanes of Interstate 25 just north of the Cerrillos Road exit.
Police said they believe the woman who died at the scene was the driver of a late-model Nissan Altima that collided with a Rocky Mountain EMS transport truck. A female passenger in the Altima and the female driver of the medical transport truck were both hospitalized.
The Altima had an out-of-state license plate, but Wheeler did not say which state.
The driver of the Rocky Mountain EMS truck is 19-year-old Vanessa Carrillo of La Cienega. As of 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, she was in critical, but stable, condition and undergoing surgery at University of New Mexico Hospital in Allbuquerque, where she was airlifted early Tuesday morning.
Family friend and coworker Jennifer Guhl was at the hospital waiting for Carrillo, a Santa Fe High graduate, to get out of surgery Tuesday afternoon and said Carrillo had suffered facial fractures, multiple breaks in both legs and a fractured elbow. She was conscious after the crash, according to Guhl, but was put under a medical coma by mid-morning in Albuquerque.
Carrillo and Guhl had just transported a patient from Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center to the patient’s home in Albuquerque early Tuesday. Guhl had just been dropped off by Carrillo shortly before the crash and Carrillo was taking the medical transport truck back to the company to pick up her car and go home.
Carrillo is a student at Santa Fe Community College and hopes to one day be a doctor. She has been working for Rocky Mountain EMS for more than two years and also volunteers with the Santa Fe County Fire Department through the La Cienega station.
The northbound lanes of Interstate 25 at the Cerrillos Road exit were still closed at 2 p.m. Tuesday, but were expected to open by the evening rush hour, according to Wheeler.
Police spent the day gathering evidence from a crash scene that stretches “several hundred feet,” according to Wheeler. The Altima rolled several times after the collision, Wheeler said. Preliminary reports indicated the car was reaching speeds of around 100 miles per hour moments before the crash.
Wheeler said a call was received at the emergency dispatch center around 2 a.m. reporting a wrong way driver on the interstate. A Santa Fe County Sheriff’s deputy was responding when the crash occurred, but Wheeler said there was not a pursuit activated.
“They were trying to locate her at the time of the crash,” Wheeler said.
While it is unclear how long the driver of the Altima had been going the wrong way on the interstate, police believe it was at least from the Eldorado area about 12 miles away.
Investigators have obtained a blood sample from the deceased woman in an effort to determine if she was under the influence of alcohol at the time.
“The obvious indicators are there — traveling the wrong way on the interstate, driving at high rates of speed, the crash occurring around 2 a.m. — but while we may suspect it, we are not concluding that this was in fact alcohol related at this point,” Wheeler said.
Republished with permission from Santa Fe New Mexican