Van crash kills three, injures eight in Grant County

ROYAL CITY, Wash. – A car crash early Thursday morning left three dead and eight injured when an SUV collided with a passenger van.

The crash occurred just after 4:30 a.m. at Adams Road and Frenchman Hills Road, said Grant County Sheriff’s Lt. Keith Siebert.

The SUV was eastbound on Frenchman Hills when it collided with the van, which was northbound on Adams. The van rolled several times and several of the 11 people inside were ejected.

Among the van’s passengers, three were killed and seven were injured, said Kyle Foreman, Grant County Sheriff’s Office spokesman. The woman driving the SUV also suffered injuries.

Names of the deceased and injured were withheld Thursday as officials attempted to notify kin.

“The most important thing to do is pray for the families,” Foreman said.

Investigators believe that the driver of the SUV failed to yield to the van despite a stop sign, Foreman said.

All occupants of the vehicles were adults, Foreman said. Passengers in the van likely were headed to a work site.

Siebert said neither drugs nor alcohol are suspected of being a factor.

At least one patient was airlifted from the scene. Others injured were taken by ambulance to hospitals in Wenatchee, Moses Lake and Quincy. The crash scene is about 5 miles northwest of Royal City.

The van had seats for about a dozen. Seat belts are required to be worn by passengers in vans, officials said, and crash investigators are working to determine if some of the passengers were not wearing seat belts.

“We will continue to look at that,” Foreman said. “However, the amount of people ejected from the van suggest some people weren’t wearing any.”

The roads were closed for several hours but reopened at about 3 p.m.