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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Accident kills five children


In this image  from KTVB video, divers search the water where a car slid into a pond Tuesday. Divers found the vehicle in about 20 feet of water with  five children trapped inside.
 (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
Associated Press The Spokesman-Review

EMMETT, Idaho – A car carrying five children on their way to school slid off an icy highway into a pond Tuesday. All five died, including the 15-year-old driver, an Idaho State Police spokesman said.

A witness reported seeing the children’s gray 1989 Ford Tempo slide off the icy winding highway and into the pond at about 7:30 a.m., police spokesman Rick Ohnsman said.

Divers found the vehicle in about 20 feet of water with the children, from two families, still trapped inside.

Drivers may be licensed at 15 in Idaho, with some restrictions, though state lawmakers are now considering a measure that would boost training requirements to curb above-average traffic fatality rates among the state’s youngest drivers.

Killed were driver Brooke Probst, 15; Brandt Probst, 12; Megan Walker, 15; Tyler Walker, 14; and Kyle Walker, 12, Ohnsman said.

The children all lived in Sweet, an unincorporated area along State Highway 52 about 16 miles northeast of Emmett. The accident site, north of Black Canyon Dam, is about 30 miles north of Boise.

Taylor Madsen, 16, a junior at Emmett High School who said she was a friend of Brooke Probst and Megan Walker, went to the site Tuesday afternoon.

She seemed stunned by the loss of her friends and classmates.

“You don’t imagine these things happening. It doesn’t seem like a reality until it happens,” said Madsen, who learned of the deaths during her second-period class.

The telephone was busy at the Probst family’s home.

A man who said he was the former Boy Scout leader for Tyler and Kyle Walker said this is the second time that family has been visited by tragedy in recent years. Kevan Kjar, the scoutmaster in Eagle, Idaho, where the Walkers lived before moving to Sweet, said one of the family’s other young children, a daughter, died several years ago in a truck accident.

The mother was devastated, Kjar said.

“It was a big family, but they lost their other daughter, and now this,” he said, adding he did not know how many children there were in the family.