Two dead, one injured at Basin off-road vehicle areas

MOSES LAKE – Two people are dead and one seriously injured following separate episodes at sand dunes in Grant County, raising the recent death toll to three in Columbia Basin off-road recreation areas.

Spencer Whitman, 10, of Newcastle, was pronounced dead March 25 following an all-terrain vehicle accident at the sand dunes near Beverly in the western part of the county.

According to witnesses, the boy, who was wearing a helmet, lost control of the quad-runner at a high rate of speed, Deputy Coroner Lynette Henson said.

“He made a jump with the vehicle in the hardpan area of the sand dunes park,” sheriff’s Deputy John Turley said.

“The impact of the strike forced the 10-year-old into the handlebars and the hard ground.”

Parents of the boy said he was an experienced rider.

On the same day, about 15 miles to the east, David R. Row, 64, of Federal Way, collapsed and died while trying to dislodge his motorcycle after it got stuck in sand on a race course during a hill climb in the dunes near Royal City, Turley reported.

In a third case, a 5-year-old boy was seriously injured while riding with his father on a recreational vehicle in the dunes eight miles south of Moses Lake. The father escaped injury, but the boy was taken to Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane for treatment for a lacerated liver, a punctured lung and severe lung bruising.

“As they traversed a large sand dune, the quad-runner flipped and both dad and son went over backwards,” Turley said.

At least 25 accidents resulting in injury were reported the last weekend in March at the Horn Rapids Off-Road Vehicle Park in Richland, where a 12-year-old boy died a week earlier.

“If we had a boxing tournament with these kinds of injuries, it’d be shut down in a hurry,” said Dr. Steven J. Kincaid, a surgeon who treated some of the injured at Kadlec Medical Center in Richland.

On March 17, Blake Webb of Rathdrum, Idaho, was practicing on the Horn Rapids course when he crashed his motorcycle over a double jump and was hit by another rider, Douglas Wold, 19, of Walla Walla, who made the jump and was unable to stop after landing just in front of the fallen boy.

Four men attempted cardiopulmonary resuscitation but were unable to revive Blake and he died at the scene.