Teen Reported Dead Found Alive After Medical Mix-Up (a week later)

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AOL News

Theunis Bates For the last week, the family and friends of 19-year-old Abby Guerra, who officials said died in a July 18 car crash, have been mourning. Yesterday, the promising young soccer star from Glendale, Ariz., was discovered to be in the hospital, alive.

Authorities had confused Guerra with 21-year-old Marlena Cantu, another passenger in the vehicle who was thought to have survived the crash with severe injuries but in fact was killed. Cantu's family have sat at Guerra's bedside for the past week, believing she was Marlena, and now are left with the cruel revelation that their loved one actually died in the crash.

The two women were traveling home from a day out at Disneyland in Southern California with three former high school friends when the left-rear tire of their SUV blew out, causing the vehicle to flip.

Guerra's parents were told that their daughter, who had just finished her freshman year at the University of Evansville in Indiana on a soccer scholarship, had died at the scene. Fellow passenger Tyler Parker, 20, was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix. He died the following day. The two other passengers, one of whom officials falsely identified as Cantu, were also taken to the hospital and treated for severe head trauma.


Read more: http://www.aolnews.com/health/article/abby-guerra-reported-dead-in-crash-discovered-to-be-alive-in-hospital/19567634?icid=main|aim|dl1|link1|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aolnews.com%2Fhealth%2Farticle%2Fabby-guerra-reported-dead-in-crash-discovered-to-be-alive-i

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Video with FULL story at link.

[Schema Thing]

1. yikes! a left rear tire blowout should not cause a vehicle to flip.

[Whoa_Nelly]

2. Maybe the driver overcorrected

and that caused the flip. Maybe add to high a speed at time of blowout to that.

[northernlights]

3. and maybe add less experienced driver to it all .....nt

[Bette Noir]

18. And SUVs have a high center of gravity, making them more flip-prone.

[Schema Thing]

4. That's probably what happened.

panic. I've had a rear tire blowout at 80+ mph, and there was no loss of control.


I so wish driving simulators where part of everyone's curricula before being given a license. People kinda sorta learn to drive, but kids are almost never taught how to drive in emergency situations. And simulations of texting, changing radio stations, answering the phone, talking on the phone, etc. could hammer home just how quickly things can go bad.

[TexasProgresive]

7. Humm! was it a Ford Explorer with Firestone A/T Widerness tires?

Rear tire blows and Explorer flips.
Firestone blamed Ford - Ford blamed Firestone. I blame both. Here's an excerpt of one such case:

The sun beat down on the Explorer as Corpus Christi suburbs gave way to wide-open Texas desert. The tires hummed against the pavement. Inside Donna, Tara and Kevin traveled in cushy comfort. Tara set the cruise control to 70 mph as they headed north on Route 181, past dusty towns like Paplote, Beeville, Tuleta and Hobson. While Donna and Tara were strapped in the front, Kevin sat in the back without a seatbelt, nudging forward to participate in the conversation, which, punctuated with squeals of laughter, had turned bawdy. The three of them were having so much fun they didn't even bother turning on the radio.

They were on the road about two hours when the trouble started. Although they couldn't have known it the 15-inch right rear Firestone tire had begun to peel apart. A separation developed around the tire's shoulder. Every minute the SUV was in motion the two layers of rubber rubbed together. In some areas the rubber was completely worn through. Twenty miles outside of San Antonio, Donna and her friends had just passed a sign warning of a bridge coming up when the tread snapped away from the tire.

Suddenly an explosion from outside the cabin seemed to rock the Explorer. The car jerked hard to the right. Tara struggled to stay on the road by turning the wheel left and hitting the brakes, but the Explorer had plans of its own. Tires screeching, the back end fishtailed, skidding out of control. Tara spun the wheel the other way and the rear responded by coming around as they continued to skid in a 180-degree turn. But she was still unable to gain control.

The Explorer slid into the left lane and its rear end went off the shoulder and into a ditch. "Hold on!" Tara called out as the car flipped into the air, cartwheeling end over end. The Explorer twisted upside down in midair and 3,000 pounds of SUV pounded down on the ground, crushing in the passenger's side roof. Because of the 10 inches of slack in her safety belt, Donna's head was propped against the top of the car. The force snapped her neck and she was blinded by white light as a sharp pain jolted through her spine. The Explorer spun sideways, rolled over one-and-a-half more times and careened into a chain-link fence ...

http://origin-www.fastcompany.com/bookclub/excerpts/0060090588.html

[CreekDog]

12. Even if those weren't the tires, SUV's still flip way too easily

Non defective tires blow out --but that shouldn't lead to loss of control or, especially, rollovers.

[tavalon]

5. This is not the first time this has happened

[Edweird]

6. I find the use of 'found' kind of odd.

It's not like she was missing - she was right there in the hospital bed the whole time. They just misidentified her.

No matter what, it has to be an emotional rollercoaster for the two families: one hears that their daughter is actually dead instead of alive and another hears their daughter is actually alive when they were told she was dead. "I'm so glad your daughter was killed instead of mine" is proably gonna get them off the xmas card list.

[BobTheSubgenius]

8. This was an episode of House.

Although the car accident in this story was a collapsing building on House, the hospital part of both are remarkably similar.

[htuttle]

14. GMTA

Had the same thought when I read the article.

[Bette Noir]

19. "House" has based episodes on real life more than once.

I've recognized a couple of stories from V. I. Ramachandran's memoirs. I hope he got paid well.

[Ruby the Liberal]

9. This happened before, in 2006

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-06-01-vanryn-cerak-cover_x.htm

Photos at link.

Whitney Cerak and Laura VanRyn looked remarkably alike. But so much alike that a coroner investigating a traffic accident could confuse one, who died, with the other, who lived? That Laura's family could tend the injured Whitney for five weeks before realizing that she was not their daughter? "It's just so unbelievable," Whitney's grandfather Emil Frank said of a case of mistaken identities that left one family and one hometown exultant; another family and another town crushed; and a shaken coroner concluding that he's not cut out for the job.

"We're so elated," said Joe Duff, manager of Whitney's hometown of Gaylord, Mich., upon learning that Whitney, and not her fellow college student Laura, had survived a highway wreck. "But the community's kind of torn because there's another community and another family that's going through exactly the kind of terrible loss that we went through."

[WheelWalker]

10. Confusion of identity can be exacerbated when one is also (for whatever reason)

carrying the driver's license of the other.

[kurtzapril4]

11. I wonder what speed

The tires were rated for. Most tires that people buy are rated for <90 MPH.

I found this out because I had my fast-ish car(brand new tires, btw) out on a stretch of road where no cops could hide and I got it up to 130 MPH before I got scared, and got back down to a comfy 80 MPH. I told my mechanic about this and he chewed me out for an hour. My brand new tires were rated for 90 MPH. "you could have been killed! The tread could have separated! You dumb ass! You moron! etc, etc, etc..." Haven't done it again, that's for sure.

I'm so sorry for these people.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

23. "Most tires that people buy are rated for

I'd like a link for that, please. It has been my observation that the lowest speed rating you can generally find on tires sold for on-highway passenger car use carry a speed rating of "S," which indicates that the tire can be run at speeds up to 112 mph. Temporary spares have lower speed ratings, but full-size tires are generally rated "S" and above.

NHTSA, Tire Safety

Scroll down; it's near the bottom.

How to Read Speed Rating, Load Index & Service Descriptions

[davepc]

13. Dosen't the next of kin have to identify the body?!

[Recursion]

15. After a car wreck it can be hard even for next of kin to tell for sure NT

[wickerwoman]

16. In a major car crash,

the body may not be easy to identify, especially if a fire was involved or there was major damage to the face.

Two girls with similar frames, not carrying ID... it's possible to confuse them, especially for next of kin. (I mean how closely are you going to look in that situation?)

[ThomasQED]

21. True, but...

you'd think they'd be more careful before announcing a death... I wonder why they thought Abby was Marlena.

Very sad for both families.

[Bette Noir]

17. I remember a similar story about a couple of blonde teenagers a few years ago.

They didn't find out which of the girls had survived the crash until the survivor came out of her coma and asked for her parents.

[LisaL]

20. Whitney Cerak.

She actually told the doctors her name was Whitney Cerak before they figured out the mistake was made and she was not Laura Van Ryn. That case went on much longer than a week.

[Ian David]

22. This has happened at least once before. I think there was even an episode of Dr. House about it. n/t