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Woman dies in head-on crash on Highway 26

Police are unsure why the driver crossed centerline

By Marcus Hathcock

The Gresham Outlook, Jan 11, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009

A Kelso woman died Friday night, Jan. 4, after her car collided head-on with a sport utility vehicle on Highway 26 east of Sandy.

Around 7:35 p.m., a Ford Focus driven by 34-year-old Gretchen Lee Kahnert was headed west on Highway 26 near McCabe Road, when, for an unknown reason, it crossed the centerline into the right eastbound lane.

Kahnert’s Focus immediately struck a Hyundai Tucson SUV driven by Rhododendron resident David M. Trujillo, 66.

“David told me it looked like the car that hit them was going to make a left-hand turn off the highway (onto McCabe Road),” said Trujillo’s stepson, Rob Standen. “He took his foot off the gas to create a bit more space, but before he realized they weren’t turning, the car straightened out and hit them.”

The Focus came to rest on top of the Hyundai in the eastbound lanes.

“I don’t know if I’ve seen one where the car hit directly and flipped over like that,” said Sandy Deputy Fire Chief Phil Schneider, who responded to the crash. “In most cases, it’s more of a grazing; this was just direct – an instant, millisecond deceleration.”

Schneider described the crash as two cars heading for each other at 55 mph – 110 mph of force – and stopping when they collided.

“Where they hit, that’s where they were,” he said. “They didn’t move anywhere.”

Kahnert, the lone occupant of the vehicle and a resident of Kelso Road, was pronounced dead at the scene. She was wearing her seatbelt at the time of the crash.

Trujillo and his wife, 60-year-old Ann Standen-Trujillo, suffered serious but not life-threatening injuries.

“Mom is especially banged up; both of her feet and ankles got crushed,” Standen said of Standen-Trujillo. “Her left forearm and wrist got crushed. Her right arm was the lucky one; there was a fracture above the elbow, so she won’t have to have a cast, but it will be sore a while.”

Trujillo experienced a “mashed” right ankle, Standen said.

Both were using safety restraints and were protected by the vehicle’s airbags.

“If they didn’t have airbags, this probably would have been a multiple fatality,” Schneider said.

The crash site was several miles from the recently installed cable barriers, which were installed to prevent collisions like this.

In a stretch of road where only 2 feet separate the eastbound and westbound fast lanes, “That would have made the difference,” Schneider said.

Personnel from the Oregon State Police, Sandy and Hoodland fire departments, American Medical Response, the Sandy Police Department, the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office and the Oregon Department of Transportation assisted at the scene. Eastbound lanes of Highway 26 were closed until about 12:30 a.m.

At the time of the collision, Kahnert was driving with a suspended license, a judgment levied as a result of a 2005 driving while under the influence of intoxicants conviction in Gresham.

Oregon State Police troopers from the Portland Area Command office and the Government Camp worksite are continuing to investigate the cause of the crash.

Kahnert’s best friend friend of seven years, Jana Templin of Rhododendron, said Kahnert was “the most beautiful thing” she’d ever seen, and a person with a natural knack for people.

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