Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 30, 1991 TAG: 9103300341
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Salem police said Friday night that it was a "probability" that a male acquaintance of the driver had been in the car and was swept downstream.
Authorities stopped searching about 8 p.m. but planned to resume this morning.
The condition of the driver, Susan Ashley Carter, 16, a junior at Cave Spring High School in Roanoke County, could not be confirmed Friday night. Her family requested that Roanoke Memorial Hospital release no information.
When she was pulled out of her vehicle from water that had risen to neck level, Carter appeared to be unconscious, but she did have a pulse, rescuers said.
The accident happened about 2:30 p.m. in the 1100 block of Kessler Mill Road. A witness said the car was heading south when it ran off the left shoulder and hit a rock outcropping at a bend in the creek. It turned over, went down a 40-foot cliff and came to rest right side up.
Police, firefighters and rescue crewmen clung to trees and rocks on the cliff above the car as they tried to attach safety lines and free Carter.
"Hold on. Hold on, little lady," Police Officer Ralph Manspile told her as he stood waist-deep in the rushing creek. He cradled the back of her head with his hand. "We're going to get you out of here."
Rescuers pulled Carter out of the car and strapped her into a wire-basket stretcher. She was pulled to the top of the embankment and then taken to Roanoke Memorial.
Leon Epperly, 74, who lives across the creek from where the accident happened, said storm runoff often flows across Kessler Mill Road and makes driving difficult. A car skidded off the road near the same spot in June 1989, but both occupants escaped without serious injury.
by CNB