Woman killed, 4 injured in Henderson auto wreck

Jace Radke

Wednesday, May 30, 2001 | 10:30 a.m.

A woman was killed and four people were seriously injured when a car was rear-ended and struck a light pole late Tuesday night in Henderson.

The accident happened about 10 p.m. in the 200 block of Gibson Road in front of the Ford Country dealership when a sport utility vehicle rear-ended a small Mitsubishi, which was headed northbound on Gibson, Henderson Police said.

A passenger of the Mitsubishi, Alicia D. Livingston, 34, of Henderson, died at the scene.

Allen Keeton was visiting his girlfriend at the Ford dealership in the Valley Auto Mall and witnessed the accident.

"It was just real bad," Keeton said. "There was a little girl who was thrown from the car and was lying face down in the street. I picked her up and told her it was going to be OK, and when the ambulance came I helped put her inside."

The girl who was thrown from the Mitsubishi was taken to University Medical Center, along with a small boy, a man and a woman, all of whom had been riding in the car.

Police spokeswoman Valerie Klein said the speed in which the sport utility vehicle apparently was traveling appears to have been a factor in the accident. The force of the impact from the SUV caused the Mitsubishi to wrap almost completely around a light pole near the Ford dealership.

"The Mitsubishi had come out of a driveway at the dealership a couple of blocks up Gibson from where the accident happened," Klein said.

The SUV continued northbound on Gibson after hitting the Mitsubishi. It crossed into the southbound lanes, jumped a sidewalk, struck a metal fuse cabinet and crashed into a cement-lined flood channel.

The driver of the SUV was also taken to UMC with what appeared to be minor injuries, Klein said.

The collision with the fuse cabinet knocked out power to about 150 homes near Gibson and Painted Daisy Avenue, a Nevada Power worker said.

Darren Reboletti, who lives in the neighborhood affected by the outage, said he ran out to Gibson as soon as the lights went out.

"I heard the boom, and I knew there had been a crash," Reboletti said. "I thought the car was a little Volkswagon Bug because it had been smashed up so much."

Firefighters had to use tools and special extrication devices to cut at least two of the passengers out of the twisted remains of the Mitsubishi.

The accident shut down Gibson in both directions for more than two hours.