A 6-year-old Alcalde girl was airlifted to University of New Mexico Hospital Jan. 22 after she was ejected from a car that her older sister had lost control of and rolled off the side of State Road 68, according to the Rio Arriba Sheriff’s Department.
Irene Garcia, 6, and Carolyn Garcia, 16, were both lying in a field east of State Road 68 across from Home Run Pizza in Alcalde when emergency medical technicians and police were dispatched to the scene at about 4 p.m. ; the Pontiac the older sister was driving was on its side, entangled in a barbed wire fence.
Gladys Ramirez-Reyes witnessed the entire accident and got out of her car to help when Garcia’s car was still rolling. Ramirez-Reyes was next to Garcia when a car in front of them put on their brakes.
“(Carolyn Garcia) avoided hitting it, it avoided hitting me, I skidded off the road and she lost control of the car and just started rolling,” Ramirez-Reyes said. “I saw (Carolyn Garcia) fly out of the car. I saw her sister fly out of the car — the car barely missed her, it almost smashed her.”
Ramirez-Reyes and other witnesses who stopped to help didn’t see the driver at first after the car landed. Irene Garcia was kneeling near the vehicle, which looked like it could still tip onto her, so Ramirez-Reyes picked her up and moved her to a safer area, she said. Other people began searching the field for the driver, who stood up and started screaming for help.
Carolyn Garcia was put on a stretcher, transported over a barbed wire fence and back onto the road into the ambulance that took her to Española Hospital. On a child-sized stretcher, Irene Garcia was carried by a single paramedic to a Careflight helicopter, which cut its engine while she was being loaded on to avoid scaring her.
Ramirez-Reyes estimated the car rolled six times; the Sheriff’s report estimates it rolled three and a half times. The Garcia sisters were driving home to Alcalde when the crash occurred. Carolyn Garcia was speeding when she swerved to avoid hitting a car in front of her that was turning left, a deputy’s report states. The driver will be cited for speeding, following too close, careless driving, not wearing a seatbelt and not having her passenger in a seatbelt, according to the report.
The Garcias called Ramirez-Reyes Jan. 24 to thank her for her help, Ramirez-Reyes said. Irene Garcia suffered a concussion and a possible broken nose and had stitches on her chin, and Carolyn Garcia suffered internal bleeding — but both have since been released from the hospital, Ramirez-Reyes said. The deputy’s report does not mention the extent of the girls’ injuries.
“My God, they got really lucky because the way (Carolyn Garcia) flew out of the car and how high she flew out of the car I would have guessed she would have broken a leg,” Ramirez-Reyes said. “I had never seen anything like that in my life.”