Child located in search involved among 4 thrown from truck bed
Stephanie Bates of Markleysburg had the kind of week last week that would test any mother’s mettle. Days after her 4-year-old son Wyatt wandered away into the woods and was found safe after a nearly two-hour search, he and his older sister Destiny Sierra, 5, were among four children thrown from the open bed of a pick-up truck after the driver struck a tree.
“No longer do my kids go out of my sight,” Bates said. “No more.”
State police said the driver, Bobby Collins, 18, was traveling north on Thomas Drive in Henry Clay Township at 6:55 p.m. Saturday when he lost control of his truck and struck a tree.
The four children riding in the bed were ejected and landed in a grassy field while the truck rolled on to its roof.
Collins, who was wearing a seatbelt, had minor injuries and police said the children’s injuries were moderate. Two were flown to Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, W.Va.
Bates said she understood that the injuries to other children, who police said were 10 and 12 years old, were serious. She said she was told one was released from the hospital that night and other the next day.
She said Collins is a family friend who just bought the truck, a 1991 Ford Ranger, and wanted to take the children for a ride. It was his first vehicle.
“When they left here they were in the cab. Then I got a call – four children were ejected from the bed. I was like, no,” Bates said. “My two didn’t get hurt. That was lucky.”
She took them to Uniontown Hospital where they were checked out and they were fine, albeit a little shaken up.
The truck was totaled, she said.
Four days earlier, on Tuesday, Wyatt, who is epileptic, wandered away from her house and into some woods across the street around noon, touching off a search involving about 30 emergency personnel, friends and family.
Volunteer firefighters from Markleysburg, Farmington, Addison and Bruceton Mills, Fayette and Preston county sheriff’s departments, state police, Wharton Township and Uniontown police, a Stat MedEvac helicopter and Fayette EMS joined the search.
Justin and Amber Miller of Bruceton Mills, W.Va., found him near Appalachian Lake in Preston County, W.Va.
He had a couple bumps and bruises, but was otherwise unharmed.
“I’m very fortunate and very blessed,” Bates said.