Sheriff says probe of wreck that killed high school student could take several weeks
EVANSVILLE — A car crash claimed the life of a Warrick County, Indiana, student on Monday and left a second gravely wounded, prompting an accident investigation that could take several weeks to complete and plunging a tight-knit community into grief.
According to the Warrick County Sheriff's Office, 15-year-old Alyson M. Scales was pronounced dead at the scene of the crash Monday morning around 7 a.m. at the intersection of Folsomville and Barren Fork roads.
Scales, a Boonville High School student, was being driven to school by her brother, 16-year-old Dale L. Scales Jr., who is also a student. Warrick County Sheriff Mike Wilder told the Courier & Press that their vehicle collided with a second vehicle carrying a mother and her children to school.
Dale was rushed to an Evansville hospital for treatment of serious injuries, according to Wilder, and later flown to Ascension St. Vincent in Indianapolis.
Wilder said Dale remained in "critical condition" as of Tuesday.
The occupants of the second vehicle avoided serious injuries, according to the sheriff's office.
The fatal crash hit Boonville − a city of less than 7,000 people − hard, as evidenced by the Warrick County School Corporation's decision to cancel athletics events Monday evening and to offer a crisis team's services to grieving students.
"When you lose one student and have another one that is seriously injured... it's just very tough on the school, the faculty and the students, and of course the families," Wilder said.
What exactly caused the crash is still under investigation.
"We had a reconstructionist come out, we took a bunch of drone imagery and stuff like that," Wilder said. Parsing through cellphone data and information stored on the vehicles' onboard computers could take weeks, according to Wilder.
While the investigation is in its early stages, the Warrick County Sheriff's Office described the crash as an "accident" on Tuesday.
The broader Boonville community came together to support the Scales family in the aftermath of the fatal crash, with 39 people donating more than $2,300 to help cover funeral and medical expenses, according to a public donation campaign.
Houston Harwood can be contacted at houston.harwood@courierpress.com
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Boonville High School student Alyson Scales killed in wreck
