A motor vehicle collision Friday afternoon left two dead after a car crossed the highway centerline and hit a semitruck.
According to a dispatch from Alaska State Troopers, they responded around 1:30 p.m. from both Seward and Soldotna to reports of a two-vehicle collision at Mile 57 of the Sterling Highway, near the Fuller Lakes Trailhead.
They found, via investigation and via eyewitness accounts, that a black 2008 Toyota Corolla, driven by 30-year-old Soldotna resident Sherika Hatten, was traveling south toward Soldotna and had collided head-on with a 2021 Peterbilt Concrete transit mixing semitruck traveling north toward Cooper Landing.
Hatten, as well as a 2-year-old boy who was the only other passenger in her car, were declared dead at the scene, the dispatch says. The driver and sole occupant of the semitruck didn’t report any injuries.
The semitruck, after the collision, slid down the road embankment toward the Kenai River, and the dispatch says that the Department of Environmental Conservation was contacted because the truck was leaking fluids and fuel.
The department didn’t respond to a request for information before press deadline.
Reach reporter Jake Dye at jacob.dye@peninsulaclarion.com.
