Author: KGW Staff
ALBANY, Ore. — Oregon State Police have released the names and ages of the victims in last week’s crash on Interstate 5 north of Albany that left seven people dead and three injured.
The victims were all in a van that had pulled over behind a parked semi truck while traveling northbound on the afternoon of May 18. A second semi truck left the road and smashed into the back of the van, pushing it into the first semi truck.
The driver of the second truck, Lincoln Clayton Smith of California, was arrested on charges of DUII, reckless driving, manslaughter and assaults. A district attorney said Smith refused a field sobriety test and was unable to focus and answer basic questions, the Salem Statesman Journal reported. The prosecutor also said Smith acknowledged taking “speed” the day before the crash and was in possession of methamphetamine, according to the paper.
The van occupants were all farmworkers who had been traveling at an hour when agricultural laborers typically commute home, the state’s farmworkers union said Saturday.
The four surviving van occupants were hospitalized, and three of them remain hospitalized as of Monday with serious injuries, OSP said. The names, ages residences, and conditions of the victims are as follows:
- Adan Garcia Garcia, 40, of Woodburn — minor injury
- Hector Galindo, 45, of Gervais — serious injury
- Maria Flores Martinez, 60, of Salem — serious injury
- Jose Eduardo Solis Flores, 41, of Gervais — serious injury
- Eduardo Lopez, 31, of Gervais — deceased
- Alejandro Jimenez Hernandez, 36, of Gervais — deceased
- Josue Garcia Garcia, 30, of Salem — deceased
- Luis Enrique Gomez Reyes, 30, of Woodburn — deceased
- Javier Suarez, 58, of Woodburn — deceased
- Alejandra Espinoza Carpio, 39 — deceased
- Juan Carlos Leyva Carrillo, 37, of Woodburn — deceased
“All of these hardworking immigrants in this vehicle….7 of their lives taken away. The purpose of them being here was to better their lives, and it was taken away,” said the daughter of one of the victims at Smith’s arraignment on Friday.
The driver of the parked truck in front of the van, 36-year-old Eduard Netesov of Gresham, was uninjured, police said.
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