JACKSON — A Salt Lake City family experienced two traumatic crashes on northwest Wyoming roads in the span of 10 hours last Friday.
Alex Malmborg, 49, said his oldest daughter and her boyfriend were injured in a crash that afternoon in Sublette County, an hour southeast of Jackson. Later that same day, as members of the family left the hospital, Malmborg and his other daughter were in a head-on crash on Highway 22 in which both cars caught fire and Malmborg pulled the other driver from her burning vehicle.
The food and beverage director for Park City Mountain Resort, Malmborg said he and his family were in town from Salt Lake City visiting his in-laws, who live in Teton Village, when Friday came at them swinging.
At 1 p.m., his oldest daughter, Becca Malmborg, 18, and her boyfriend, 17, were hit while turning onto Highway 191 from Highway 189 at Daniel Junction west of Pinedale. The boyfriend was cited for failing to stop, and both were taken by ambulance to St. John’s Health in Jackson.
Malmborg’s boyfriend suffered a broken collarbone and separated shoulder. She was knocked unconscious and was held overnight for internal injuries to her liver, kidney and small intestine.
The family stayed at St. John’s until 10 p.m. Friday. Alex Malmborg said his wife slept over, but he started driving his youngest daughter, Eleanor, 15, along with two of her friends back to his in-laws’ house. As the group approached the Snake River bridge on Highway 22 west of Jackson, Malmborg saw a pair of headlights coming straight at him. The car wasn’t attempting to swerve or slow down.
“It was pretty much a square hit,” Malmborg said. “As soon as we hit, it was smoke everywhere. Both cars burst into flames within seconds.”
Malmborg grabbed all three kids and ran to the left side of the road, worried that an explosion was imminent. As he was making sure each child was OK, he noticed the driver who hit him, 66-year-old Wilson resident Amelie “Peggy” Thomas, was slumped over the steering wheel of her burning Lexus SUV, unconscious.
He ran back across the highway, opened her door, unclicked her seat belt and dragged her out of the burning car to a safe place on the side of the road.
“My daughter was screaming at me, ‘Dad, don’t go near it!’” Malmborg said. “I was afraid it was going to explode, but I couldn’t just leave someone else in the car.”
He identified Thomas’ pulse and checked that she was breathing. Once he confirmed that she had both, he rejoined his family. That’s when emergency personnel began arriving.
Malmborg noticed that the ground was on fire and suspected that one of the cars was leaking fuel, resulting in “30-foot flames in the air,” he said.
“The fire was burning so hot that after firemen sprayed a bunch of water on it and put it out, the cars had melted together,” Malmborg said. “They had to use a saw to cut them apart.”
Wilson woman left reeling
Thomas, a Teton County resident for 46 years, said Tuesday that she’s working through the shock. She’s never been in an accident before.
Earlier that night, she contacted her doctor about an infection and drove to Albertsons to pick up her prescription around 8 p.m. She’s allergic to penicillin and was told by the pharmacist that the medication should be OK because she’d been on a similar antibiotic before.
She made dinner at home and then took the pill, which immediately made her sneeze — “20 times,” Thomas said Tuesday. She looked in the mirror and was “pure red,” she said.
“I didn’t want to die by myself at home,” Thomas said. “So I got in my car to get Benadryl to counteract it.”
Thomas was on the phone with her doctor explaining her allergic reaction as she lost consciousness on the bridge. She was pleading with him “not to hang up.” She remembers seeing the airbag deploy and flames, but then everything went dark again.
“I don’t remember anything after that until I woke up on the bike path with people around me preparing to do CPR,” Thomas said.
A bystander, Jackson Realtor Latham Jenkins, sat there with her and held her hand. Jenkins, a 30-year resident, said he noticed Thomas was wearing a shirt from Shervin’s Auto and Tire Care and knew she was local. With his first responder training, he stepped in to help.
“You run into a lot of accidents living here, but this was the first time I really believed someone was passing before my eyes,” Jenkins said.
Thomas, however, “popped up” after a few minutes of lying down, terrified that she had killed someone, she said.
“I had no control over my arms or legs,” Thomas said. “They were going like crazy.”
Jenkins knows Thomas’ partner, so he contacted him to let him know about the accident.
“It makes me feel grateful for living in a small town,” Jenkins said. “I was happy to make that connection.”
St. John’s kept her overnight to ensure she was OK, and she’s waiting on the results of her blood work. She didn’t have any injuries, which she credits to her Lexus, among other things.
“I had a son that died at 7 months old 35 years ago,” Thomas said. “He’s been my guardian angel.”
The aftermath
Wyoming Highway Patrol Trooper Andy Jackson confirmed that the crash was the result of an allergic reaction that caused Thomas to lose consciousness behind the wheel. Everyone was wearing their seat belts. Jackson said there was “zero” alcohol use and applauded both drivers for not speeding.
“The biggest thing is that the drivers were going at or under the speed limit, between 35 and 40 mph,” Jackson said.
Malmborg said no one in his vehicle was injured, either, but he’s “limping around.”
“We’re all sore,” he said Tuesday.
Across both crashes, everyone is OK, Malmborg said, but a sense of trauma remains.
For his daughter’s boyfriend who was driving during the Pinedale crash, the effects are particularly acute.
“The physical stuff will heal, but emotionally he’s a bit of a wreck,” Malmborg said. “My daughter was unconscious, and he thought she was dead. She was out for three minutes.”
Malmborg said he’s still seeing headlights coming and swerving at him.
Thomas said she regrets getting behind the wheel that night. She carries guilt about what happened to Malmborg’s family in the span of one day.
Thomas called Malmborg on Tuesday to say that she’s taking full liability for the accident. She said it was important to her to let him know that she wasn’t driving drunk and to explain how upset the accident has made her.
“I know he saved my life by dragging me out of the car,” Thomas said. “I needed to let him know how grateful I was that he did that for me.”
Malmborg said he drove cautiously Monday, as the family returned to Utah.
“I definitely had some second thoughts about speed, seat belts,” Malmborg said. “Driving back on single-lane highways behind a slow-moving car, it’s so easy to pass them, but I definitely had some second thoughts about passing people. I didn’t drive quite as fast as I normally would have.”
Thomas said that she is undergoing therapy before getting behind the wheel again.
