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Family’s SUV plunges over hill on U.S. 50

Hydroplaning believed to be cause

First responders work to assist young children in the backseat of an SUV that ran off of U.S. 50 Tuesday morning and slid about 150 feet down a hill. The children and their mother were taken by ambulance to Marietta Memorial’s Belpre Campus, a Wood County Sheriff’s deputy said. (Photo by Evan Bevins)

PARKERSBURG — A Belpre woman and her three young children were taken to the hospital Tuesday after their SUV hydroplaned off U.S. 50 and plunged about 150 feet down a hill.

The crash happened around 10:03 a.m. Tuesday, at almost the same spot a tractor-trailer rig rolled over after its tire blew out less than 24 hours earlier.

Other than the locations, about a mile from the West Virginia 68 interchange, the accidents seemed to be unrelated, Wood County Sheriff’s Deputy R.C. Frazier said.

Members of the Blennerhassett Volunteer Fire Department, Frazier and paramedics had to make their way down the rain-soaked slope to reach the 2003 Kia Sorento driven by Alexandra Josephine Robertson, 28, of 139 Moody Ridge Road, Belpre. Her children — ages 3, 2 and 10 months — were in the backseat.

Robertson had been driving east on U.S. 50 when  her vehicle went off the road, traveling along the side of an embankment for several hundred feet before going back onto the flat portion of the ground, Frazier said. It continued to the right of a guardrail and went over the hill, eventually striking a natural culvert formed by the falling rain and spinning around, traveling about 50 feet backward before coming to rest at the bottom of the hill.

A Blennerhassett volunteer firefighter holds a rope as another firefighter and an EMT work their way down a hill off U.S. 50 Tuesday to where an SUV came to rest after hydroplaning and running off the road. (Photo by Evan Bevins)

It’s believed the vehicle hydroplaned before going off the road, Frazier said.

“She doesn’t really remember anything because she was knocked unconscious,” he said.

No drug or alcohol use is suspected in the crash, Frazier said.

First responders used a rope attached to a stretcher to pull Robertson up the side of the hill. She and her children were taken by St. Joseph’s and Camden Clark ambulances to Marietta Memorial’s Belpre Campus, Frazier said. None appeared to have life-threatening injuries, he said.

Robertson was not listed as a patient at Memorial Tuesday afternoon, and because the children’s names were not released, their conditions could not be requested.

Responders pull a rope attached to a stretcher up a hill Tuesday morning along U.S. 50 after an SUV went over the side. The driver of the vehicle, a 28-year-old Belpre resident, and her three children were taken by ambulance to Marietta Memorial’s Belpre Campus, a Wood County Sheriff’s deputy said. (Photo by Evan Bevins)

The wet conditions are believed to have caused Tuesday’s crash, while a tire blowout was responsible for Monday’s. A tractor-trailer rig driven by Roger Barnes, 58, of Front Royal, Va., went off the road, rolled and plowed into the embankment.

Barnes was taken to Camden Clark Medical Center, where he was treated and released, according to Roger Lockhart, director of marketing for the hospital.

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