Three Drivers Arrested In Two-Car Valley Crash

Thu., Dec. 3, 1998

By Adam Lynn adaml@spokesman.com

Three drivers were arrested Tuesday after a head-on car wreck in the Spokane Valley. One of them wasn’t even involved in the crash.

State troopers said all three had been drinking.

The collision occurred about 8 p.m. on Sprague Avenue, just west of Fancher Road.

Troopers said Cynthia Bergstrom was driving her 1985 Plymouth Vista east on Sprague when a pickup headed in the opposite direction drove over a concrete barrier, crossed into her lane and hit her car head-on.

Bergstrom, who was wearing a seat belt, hurt her face and may have ruptured her spleen, troopers said. She was taken by ambulance to Sacred Heart Medical Center after emergency crews cut her free of the wreckage.

The 34-year-old woman was arrested at the hospital on suspicion of drunken driving after troopers determined she had been drinking before the wreck, WSP Lt. Bruce Clark said in a press release.

The driver of the 1985 GMC pickup, 32-year-old Paul Konen of Spokane, suffered minor injuries.

He was booked into the Spokane County Jail on one count of vehicular assault about five hours after the accident.

Troopers said he, too, had been drinking before the crash.

Konen’s wife, 30-year-old Deena Barrow, was talking to her husband on his cellular telephone when he wrecked his truck, Clark said.

Barrow drove to the scene when she learned her husband had been in a crash. When she arrived, troopers arrested her on suspicion of DUI after determining that she, too, had been drinking.

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