Gasconade County Republican

An Owensville woman seriously injured in a one-vehicle crash late Saturday morning on Route V was scheduled to be discharged on Tuesday afternoon, according to a spokeswoman for  Mercy Hospital St. Louis.

A Missouri State Highway Patrol report identified Rachelle L. Davis, 21, as a passenger in a 1998 Ford Explorer traveling west on Route V, two-tenths of a mile west of Blocks Branch Road. Donald L. Smith, 21,  also of Owensville, was driving, according to the MSHP report by Cpl. Chad J. North, a recent appointee to Zone 12 of the Patrol’s Troop F.

Smith ran off the right side of the roadway, over-corrected, and drove off the left side of the highway, North’s report noted. The vehicle overturned several times, coming to a stop on its wheels on the south side of the road.

Davis, who was not wearing a seat belt was ejected, according to the report. Smith was not wearing a seat belt either and received moderate injuries.

At the time of the incident, personnel from two Owensville Area Ambulance District units were responding simultaneously to a medical call at a local nursing home and a traumatic hand injury at a printing plant in town.

Two ambulance crews from the Gerald  Area Ambulance District (GAAD) responded to the call on Route V. One transported Smith and a young male child, approximately 1-year-old, who was also passenger, to Mercy Hospital Washington. The child had been secured in a car seat and was not visibly injured.

The child’s name was not listed in the MSHP report.

GAAD personnel began transporting Davis toward Washington for medical attention when a Staff for Life helicopter ambulance became available and landed near First Bank of Beaufort. Diane Angell, manager of the GAAD, said four helicopter ambulances in the region were already in service at the time a request was made to pick up Davis.

One of those would land at the helipad at Gerald’s Legion Park to fly out an injured production worker who was being transported by the one Owensville crew.

“The Staff for Life helicopter was returning (to Columbia) from a call in St. Louis,” said Angell about the University of Missouri Hospital’s air ambulance service based in Columbia.

Angell confirmed Davis was flown to Mercy Hospital St. Louis by Staff for Life and not to University Hospital as reported by the MSHP. The incident was reported at 11:35 a.m. Sept. 29. Owensville Fire Department  personnel, along with Gary Smith, chief of the Gerald-Rosebud Fire Protection District who had responded to the scene, assisted Gerald ambulance.