PORT ANGELES – A car carrying seven teenagers drove into the Elwha River in the early morning darkness Sunday, killing two of them.
The five others managed to escape the car as it moved in the currents about 100 yards downriver toward the Strait of Juan de Fuca on the Lower Elwha Klallam Reservation.
“This is a very, very sad event for our tribe,” Lower Elwha Klallam Tribal Chairwoman Francis Charles told the Peninsula Daily News on Sunday evening..
One of the dead is Vanna K. Francis, 17, a Port Angeles High School student, both Charles and a Francis family member confirmed.
The name of the other, a teenaged boy, has not been released by authorities.
But Makah Tribal Chairman Ben Johnson Jr. confirmed that the boy was a member of his tribe.
The silver, four-door sedan crashed into the river where Lower Elwha Road abruptly ends west of the tribal center around 3 or 4 in the morning.
“Five of the teens were able to escape; two did not,” Sgt. Sam White of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribal Police said Sunday morning.
“The hydraulics of the river pushed the car downstream about 100 yards.”
