JUAB COUNTY, Utah — Two teenagers are dead and one is in critical condition after getting into a car accident along Weiss Highway in Juab County. FOX 13 visited their hometown of Riverton after hearing the news.
“It's just very unfortunate that it happens to someone so young,” said Riverton resident Sarah Saxton. "Just the thought of losing a child is hard.”
On Thursday night, the three teens were speeding down the highway when their truck ran off the road, lost control and rolled multiple times. None of them were wearing their seatbelts, and they were ejected from the truck.
2 teens killed, one seriously injured in rollover crash in Juab County:
“We were behind the wreck that happened, we were sitting in line for about an hour, hour and a half,” said Kris Price. "That’s too bad, man. They didn’t even make it here to have fun yet.”
The Juab County Sheriff’s Office said a 15-year-old boy and a 17-year-old girl died, and another 15-year-old boy was taken to the hospital in critical condition.
“It just makes me want to educate my daughter that much more about the safety of the motor vehicle,” Saxton said. "The safety restraint system on vehicles are there for a reason. They're there to protect us.”
Shaunna Burbidge with Zero Fatalities said in the last five years, 38% of teen fatalities in Utah have been unrestrained, and out of 33 fatalities so far this year, 10 were unbuckled.
“You never know when you're going to get in a crash. And I think that that's almost part of the contributing factors, is that these teens,” she said, "they just have this sense of invincibility, that it's never going to happen to me.”
Burbidge encourages parents to set the standard of seatbelt usage in front of children and emphasize that every person in the car needs to buckle up.
“What a lot of people don't realize is, if one person in the car chooses not to wear a seat belt, the other passengers in the car, if they were to get in a crash, are 40% more likely to be killed, because that person then becomes a projectile,” she said.
The goal is to emphasize education before it's too late.
“People often will kind of laugh it off and say, Oh yeah, we're never going to get to zero. But if you ask them, okay, who in your family are you willing to give up? Suddenly that goal of Zero Fatalities rings a lot more true,” Burbidge said.
The accident remains under investigation.
