By JJ Hensley and Laurie MerrillThe Republic | azcentralTue Aug 6, 2013 10:49 PM Matt Dejarnett moved to the Valley with a plan: Complete radiology school, return to his home state of Oklahoma, start a family. Those dreams ended in an instant this week when a minivan packed with children attempted to pass a car on the right shoulder before the driver lost control and brought the van into oncoming traffic, where it collided with Dejarnett’s sedan. Dejarnett died Tuesday morning, police said, adding another death to the toll that began when a 16-year-old set out to drive his siblings to school on Monday. The collision killed three brothers in the van: 4-year-old Dominic Johnson, 5-year-old Mikquan Johnson and 11-year-old Jaymon Hamilton, in addition to Dejarnett, according to police. Two other children remained hospitalized. Phoenix police said the 16-year-old driver did not have a license and that drug-recognition experts saw signs of impairment, prompting a search warrant to obtain a blood sample from the driver on Monday. According to witnesses, the van was westbound on Southern Avenue near 59th Avenue on Monday morning when it attempted to pass a car on the right shoulder. Investigators believe the van’s driver lost control and overcorrected, bringing the van squarely in front of Dejarnett’s sedan, which smashed into the passenger side of the minivan. Dejarnett was a loving husband and devoted student who had never had an encounter with the law before Monday’s crash, said David Dejarnett, Matt’s father. David said his son was coming into his own as a radiology student in Phoenix and was planning to move home to Oklahoma once his internships were completed next year. “He was a good kid. He was not belligerent, not a bar hopper,” David said. “He was never involved in any law problems or anything like that. He was married and just looking forward to a career and having children.” Matt Dejarnett moved to Phoenix with Sarah, his wife of two years, to pursue a career in radiology. He previously worked with computers and attended welding school, but had found his calling in radiology. “She has nothing,” David said of Matt’s wife. “She gave up her career working in a hospital for him to come here and pursue this.” David said his son, an elite tuba player in high school who grew up about 20 miles north of Tulsa in Collinsville, had never been in trouble and was doing excellently in school before he was killed Monday morning. David was standing in line to board a plane back to Oklahoma with his family one day after the crash. The last 24 hours have been “surreal,” David said, adding that the family plans to convene at the only home Matt knew before coming to Phoenix about a year and a half ago. “We don’t know what else to do,” the father said. “We just want to go back home.” Police said Tuesday that the van’s 16-year-old driver was the subject of a search warrant involving his blood after drug-recognition investigators determined the driver was likely impaired. Those results and the findings of the department’s accident reconstructionists will likely take weeks, said Sgt. Trent Crump, a Phoenix police spokesman. The lengthy investigative process could take police past the deadline to file a traffic citation against the driver, but criminal charges stemming from the wreck that claimed four lives remain a possibility, officials said. “Because there are deaths involved in this, because there are physical injuries involved in this, civil citations typically won’t be issued in the time frame,” he said. “We’re not going to be issuing a civil citation in this and worry about the issue of double jeopardy.” Two girls in the van, a 12-year-old and a 3-year old, remained hospitalized Tuesday, with the older child facing the most severe injuries, Crump said, raising the possibility of more fatalities tied to the wreck. “Every day so far, and it can continue, another death is added to this,” he said. “We’ve still got at least one individual whose (condition) is life-threatening.” The van’s driver and a 14-year-old passenger have been released from the hospital.
Posted on: Wed, 07 Aug 2013 07:16:29 +0000
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