DARRETT, Z. B.

The Wickenburg Sun, Wickenburg, AZ June 12, 1953, p. 1 DEATH RODE WITH FAMILY Of Nine In Car Near Wittmann, Three Are Dead, All Others Injured, Some May Die Death was the tenth passenger in a southbound automobile which went out of control on the Phoenix Highway three miles this side of Wittmann at 6:10 a.m. Thursday. At 2 o’clock the same afternoon, the bodies of three of the passengers were in the Wickenburg Mortuary. A fourth man was in critical condition at Community Hospital. The five other passengers were in Memorial Hospital in Phoenix, the number dead or the extent of their injuries not available as the SUN went to press. At the same hour, only one of the dead here had been identified from papers found in his possession. He was Z. B. Darrett, age 40, of Houston, Tex. He is believed to have been driving the car. The other dead here were a child of perhaps five years of age and a women, estimated as around 25. Both died instantly in the fearful accident. Darrett died soon after he was brought to the hospital. It is believed all nine of the occupants were members of the Darret family, colored. Highway Patrolman George Pemberton, at the gruesome scene soon after it occurred, talked to two army truck drivers, made measurements, reconstructed the accident as follows: The car, a Mercury, swerved across the highway and road the shoulder for 105 feet before striking the abutment of the concrete bridge over Bloody Wash. It then hurtled through the air 64 feet turning over before striking again, leaped an additional 23 feet and tore through the sand of the wash for another 40 feet before coming to a final stop. All nine of the passengers were thrown out of the car and the bodies of the dead and the injured lay just where they landed. The car was completely wrecked. The motor was thrown forward several feet, the chassis and transmission ripped from under the body. The top was demolished. Personal possessions of the passengers were scattered over the area of several hundred square feet. It was a scene of carnage. All of the living were unconscious, some bleeding, some moaning and gasping for breath, some inert in grotesque postures. Two ambulances from Glendale reached the scene first and took five of the injured to the hospital in Phoenix. The Wickenburg ambulance arrived soon afterward and brought Darrett to the hospital. Another Wickenburg vehicle brought Darrett to the hospital. Another Wickenburg vehicle brought in the unidentified man still in critical condition Thursday afternoon in the hospital here. The three known deaths increased to eight the number of highway fatalities in the Wickenburg highway patrol area since January 1.