A two-vehicle collision that recently claimed the life of a 17-year-old female from the Cremona area has now also claimed the life of a 19-year-old male from Cremona.
Dylan Barrows succumbed to his injuries in the Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary on Friday, May 6, six days after the collision.
Penhold and Innisfail fire departments responded to the collision at the intersection of Highway 42 and Rge. Rd. 273 on Saturday, April 30.
Charges are pending against a tow truck driver, who was travelling northbound on Rge. Rd. 273 when attempting to turn west on Highway 42, and collided with a Toyota RAV 4 travelling eastbound.
The 17-year-old driver of the RAV 4, Taylore Dinzey, was pronounced deceased at the scene. Barrows was a passenger in the vehicle and was airlifted via STARS to the Foothills hospital in critical condition.
Police say the driver of the tow truck and a passenger in the vehicle were uninjured in the collision.
Although RCMP officers are not releasing the names of the two deceased teens involved in the collision, a friend has confirmed it was Barrows and Dinzey.
Jenaka Down of Carstairs did not personally know Dinzey but has been good friends with Barrows for a few years. She last talked to him the day before the collision.
She said friends and family were hopeful he would pull through because he would respond to visitors, including herself, with subtle movements.
“If you'd talk about something that he liked or something that he'd remember, he'd move back and he'd squeeze your hand back,” said Down.
“But the doctors ruled it as involuntary.”
She said he was a non-judgmental person with a good sense of humour. His friends called him owl because he would often sit on top of his car and perch like an owl while making owl calls, she said with a smile.
“He was kind of like a friend to everybody,” she said.
“I just miss talking to him and having somebody always there to talk to.”
Innisfail RCMP Sgt. Lori Eiler said it could take a couple of months before charges are laid in the collision.
“We're still waiting for the collision report. We've got to do things, like we always routinely do mechanical inspections and stuff like that,” Eiler said yesterday, May 9.
“So we're still waiting for the results of all of those things, medical examiner reports, things like that. So we will not be laying any charge until we receive those,” she said.
“And they could be a month or two in the making.”
Jenaka Down,friend of Dylan Barrows
"He was kind of like a friend to everybody."
