Truck with 6 teenagers plunges off Maui cliff
Rescuers rappel 140 feet down to free a 14-year-old girl
A pickup truck carrying six people lost control on Kaupakalua Road in Haiku late Saturday and plunged down a steep 140-foot ravine, the Maui Fire Department said.
A 14-year-old girl was seriously injured, while five others in the truck sustained minor injuries. All the victims were taken to Maui Memorial Medical Center.
The accident happened about 9:45 p.m. at a hairpin turn on Kaupakalua Road at the intersection with Lepo Road.
A Maui Fire Department assistant chief said the 14-year-old did not appear to have been wearing a seat belt. He said he did not know if she was in the truck bed. The girl was thrown from the vehicle when it went over the cliff and was then pinned underneath when it came to rest.
Rescuers had to rappel down to the site to get to the girl. It took nearly two hours to free her from underneath the truck.
Her uncle, who declined to give his name, told freelance journalist Jean Simpson yesterday that the girl was in the intensive care unit at Maui Memorial.
Simpson, who went to the accident scene late Saturday and yesterday, said the pickup truck landed on its hood a couple hundred yards behind a home. Some trees might have broken the truck's fall, he said.
"Kaupakalua Road snakes through Haiku," he said. "It (the pickup truck) flew right over the edge."
This is the second accident on Maui this year in which a car has plunged down a cliff.
In April two people -- a 34-year-old woman and an 18-year-old man -- were killed when their car went down a 150-foot cliff near Lahaina pali lookout.
A 3-month-old baby girl was also critically injured.
In that accident, the victims' car was parked, with the engine running, at a gravel overlook on Honoapiilani Highway when the car somehow moved forward and plunged over the cliff onto a rocky shoreline.