Woman dies in rollover on Highway 209

Four deaths in three weeks on Bigfork-area roads

By ALEX STRICKLAND / Bigfork Eagle

The scene along Montana Highway 209 on Friday night was an all too familiar one for Bigfork emergency personnel. Twenty-nine-year-old Lyla Page, who recently moved to the Bigfork area from Laurel, was killed when she rolled her 2002 Ford Explorer. It was the fourth fatality on roads around Bigfork in the past three weeks.

Page was traveling westbound at 8:10 p.m. when it appears she swerved off the road and then overcorrected, causing her SUV to roll several times, according to Montana Highway Patrol Trooper Dustin LeRette. Page was ejected from the vehicle and Flathead County Deputy Coroner Lance Norman pronounced her dead at the scene.

Excessive speed did not contribute to the crash, but alcohol possibly was a factor, LeRette said. It is standard procedure in fatal crashes to take blood samples from all the drivers involved. The blood sample will be sent to the state crime lab in Missoula.

A 24-year-old Kalispell man, Trenton James Thornton, was killed last Thursday afternoon in a head-on collision with a tractor trailer on Highway 82 near the Somers dump site. That crash, which involved four vehicles, sparked a fire that burned about three acres of a nearby field and sent a 23-year-old mother and her two young children to the hospital for precautionary checks.

Thornton was heading home from work when his 1988 Chevrolet van drifted over the center line and struck the tractor trailer at 4:07 p.m. The truck then crossed into the oncoming lane and hit an SUV. Debris from the collision hit a Ford Taurus also traveling westbound. The occupants of the Ford Taurus were uninjured.

Local residents and teachers at Swan River School, Vicki Poston and Kari Bolivar, helped pull the 68-year-old truck driver out of his burning truck, and helped the mother get her two children out of her vehicle at the scene.

The truck, carrying a load of apples, was completely destroyed by flames.

Last month, Matthew Emslie, 27, and Sean Purcell, 26, of Bigfork, were killed when their SUV rolled along Highway 209 near Ferndale and both men were ejected. The Montana Highway Patrol indicated that alcohol was involved in that accident.

None of the deceased were wearing a seat belt.

Page was the 19th traffic-related fatality in Flathead County this year. Twenty-seven people were killed on Flathead County Roads in 2007.