Four killed in Burien pickup crash
"He was a very outgoing, loving, kind person," Sharon Merten said.
Joshua Merten's mother, stepfather and four siblings were gathered yesterday, trying to understand his death.
"Everyone calls you and asks what they can do," Sharon Merten said. "What someone can do is have my son walk through the door."
Joshua Merten died at the scene of the 3:40 a.m. crash in the 17000 block of Ambaum Boulevard South in Burien. Also killed in the crash were Andrea Lakeside, 21, Nicole Vankovsky, 20 and Elizabeth Jackman, 19. Jackman died at 8:48 a.m. at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.
Police said speed and alcohol likely contributed to the crash. The impact of the speeding pickup against two trees was so severe that the truck's roof was torn off and all four people were thrown from the truck along with one of the seats.
The four were traveling south in the red pickup along a straight, residential stretch of Ambaum Boulevard when the truck swerved into a tree trunk, smashed into another and skidded back onto the road and stopped, police said.
Because Lakeside, Vankovsky, Merten and Jackman all were ejected from the truck, it was unclear which person was driving, said King County Sheriff's spokesman Rodney Chinnick.
"Alcohol and speed appeared to be a deadly combination in this case," Chinnick said.
The severe damage to the full-sized truck showed that it had been moving at a high speed, Chinnick said. And he said deputies found beer cans at the scene. Police said yesterday that a full investigation could last months.
Merten's family gathered at his mother's home in Sumner yesterday to grieve the loss of their brother and son. He worked as a window washer on high-rise buildings and made sure to visit his family once or twice a week, Sharon Merten said.
Joshua Merten loved the outdoors, getting heavily involved in snowboarding, water-skiing and paintball, his mother said. He had a passion for helping others, like the day when, at age 13, he gathered blankets and pillows for families displaced by a fire.
He watched out for his mother, even giving her a couple of nicknames.
"I'd love for him to pick me up and call me 'Little One' one more time," Sharon Merten said.
By late yesterday morning, the wreckage had been hauled away and the only sign of the violent crash was in the trees, where strips of the trunks had been torn away.
Neighbor Bill Devine said he heard crews at the scene around 6 a.m. and went outside to see the smashed metal.
He said he couldn't make sense of it. It was only when he saw a four-wheel-drive logo on the wreckage that he realized that he was looking at a truck, its roof torn off and its doors warped in.
"It was the most miserable-looking crash I've ever seen," said Devine, 69. "Beyond description, really."
Yesterday's crash ranked among the worst single-vehicle accidents in local history.
The deadliest was in July 2001, when six young people were killed when their overloaded car hit a bridge pillar in Auburn.
Last June, four people from Eastern Washington, including a father and son, were killed, and a fifth person critically injured, when their car struck an elk and plunged off an embankment on Interstate 90 near North Bend.
Last November, four teenage boys were killed and two were seriously injured when their car hit a tree in the Rainier Beach area of Seattle.
Cara Solomon: 206-464-2024 or csolomon@seattletimes.com
