Mother's Day accident sends two to area hospitals

A Mother’s Day accident northwest of Kimball sent two Kimball men to area hospitals.

The accident, involving just one vehicle, occurred at approximately 9 p.m., according to Kimball County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Travis Terrill.

The driver of the vehicle, Gabriel Howard, 25, and his brother, Benito Howard, 30, were traveling west on county road 48, when they hit a muddy patch of road and Howard lost control of the 1991 GMC Jimmy owned by his sister, Phoebe. The vehicle veered into the ditch and hit a transponder.

The driver was transported by Air Link to Regional West Medical Center with back and neck pain and a loss of feeling in his leg, according to Terrill, while the passenger was treated at the Kimball Health Services Hospital for bumps and bruises, according to their mother, Anita Robinson, then released the same day.

The driver was released the following day and, according to Robinson, is recovering at home.

Terrill stated that there were no citations given to the driver of the vehicle, but that the vehicle was most likely traveling at too great a speed for the conditions of the road traveled.

According to a public Facebook post from the driver of the vehicle, Gabriel Howard, last Tuesday May 10, medical staff informed him in the early stages of diagnoses and treatment that he might leave Regional West in a wheelchair.

The man had posted, “Stormchasing, Crash, (expletive). Glad I’m upright and walking. There for a minute at the hospital they were talking I was going to be going home in a wheelchair. I thank God it’s just a fractured vertebrae,” he wrote. “The dumb moments we do when they present themselves to show us the hard way that, that was a bad idea,” finished the Facebook post.