May 31, 2003

Wreck injures teens

         

       Three teen-agers are lucky to be alive after their car flipped and landed upside-down 10 feet from a pond in White River Township on Thursday night.  The car veered off the north side of Olive Branch Road at 11:15 p.m., struck a ground wire and flew over the embankment of a creek near Eagle’s Trace Drive, settling on its roof.  Mike Pruitt, spokesman for the Bargersville Fire Department, which came to assist, said the students are fortunate to be alive.  “They were very lucky they didn’t end up in the lake,” Pruitt said.  “They were very close to it.”  One passenger – Michael Ballenger, 16, a student at Center Grove High School – is being treated at Wishard Memorial Hospital.  Ballenger broke the bone around his eye socket and will require surgery, said Ron Buckler, father of the car’s driver, Stephen Buckler.  The other two teens suffered minor injuries.  Both were released from hospitals early Friday morning.  Stephen Buckler, 17, a student at Southport High School, has bruises on his collarbone.  The other passenger, Amelia Reames, 16, a student at Center Grove High School, had a cut on her forehead and a black eye.  Buckler said he remembers rocks and debris coming in the car and yelling before he blacked out.  “I heard him screaming,” he said of Ballenger.  “I remember being afraid that he was going to die.”  Buckler said he woke up to the feeling that the seat belt was strangling him.  His seat was shoved forward and his nose was bleeding due to the airbag, which had deployed.  By twisting around, he managed to escape the car.  He came out to find his friends outside, but bleeding.  He said he ran to the road, trying to stop cars for help.  The third car finally stopped.  Only Buckler was wearing a seatbelt.  The teens have been friends for four years.  Buckler and Ballenger both work at Fazoli’s on State Road 135.  They were on their way to pick up Ballenger’s and Reame’s cars.  Officials said none of the teens had been drinking.  It was a case of losing control of the car, they said.  However, the crash was the result of aggressive driving, said Travis Derrett of the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department in a police report.  The report states that Buckler was driving at an unsafe speed.  Buckler said he had been driving 60 mph, police said.  Ron Buckler said his son probably could not have been driving 60 mph, or he would be dead.  He said his son may been delirious.  Buckler said his son saw a sign that seemed to indicate the road would turn left.  “He thought that meant a wide turn,” Buckler said.  “He got into an open area and thought it was still going left.  He got confused.  These are the kind of kids you think are OK.”  Buckler said he was sobered by visiting the scene on Friday morning and seeing a wooden stake driven through the front windshield of the car, inches from where his son was.  Lt. Jim Engmark of the White River Township Fire Department was first at the scene.  He said the teens had crawled out of the car by the time he arrived.  The car landed in a culvert or ditch of softball-sized stones.  All of the teens were conscious and talking when rescuers arrived on the scene.  The two young men were taken to Wishard because their injuries appeared to be more serious, Engmark said.  The police report lists Ballenger and Reames as bleeding, with head injuries.  After treating the teens, the fire department laid down hazardous prevention materials to absorb the gasoline leaking from the car toward the creek.    (reprinted with permission from the Daily Journal)

  

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