Coach and player are killed; driver of pickup truck that slammed into bus carrying team arrested and charged with DUII and other counts

Torrin Richardson doesn’t remember the collision.

The Umpqua Community College softball player was lying in the back of the team bus last Friday night, exhausted from the game they’d won earlier that day, when she heard a split-second of screaming.

Her next memory is of her teammate Haven Frable helping her up and ushering her toward an emergency hatch before she blacked out again, as Frable kicked open the hatch and dragged her out of the overturned bus before helping several other teammates escape.

She briefly remembers being pulled out of the hatch before losing consciousness again, and the next time she came to she was sitting on the side of the road.

“I have this image burned in my brain of sitting on the sidewalk and looking over at the bus,” she said. The headlights of other cars were pointing at the smashed bus, forming a “big spotlight” on it, she said.

But Richardson — who had suffered a head injury in the crash — still couldn’t make sense of the facts of what had just happened.

A Chevy Silverado had crossed the center line on Oregon Route 42 and barreled into the bus as the team was returning to Roseburg from a game in North Bend, police said. Jonathan James Dowdy, the driver of the Silverado, has been arrested and faces charges that include manslaughter, reckless driving and driving under the influence, according to police and court records.

The impact of the collision, which happened at about 10 p.m., caused the bus to roll over at least once, sending the people inside tumbling through the cabin.

When the bus finally stopped moving, Frable found herself on her feet, despite having no memory of standing up in the overturned bus. The 19-year-old centerfielder later learned that she had a broken hand, a concussion, a cervical strain and bruising across her body, but with the adrenaline coursing through her body, she didn’t feel the extent of her injuries.

“The first thing I heard was coach Steve – he was yelling out in pain, and that’s what I think woke me back into [reality],” Frable said, referring to Steven Williams, one of the team’s coaches. “I just remember it was really dark. It felt like I was in a cloud of smoke.”

In the gloom she could see Richardson, the team’s pitcher, stirring into consciousness. And she spotted Jami Strinz, 46, the team’s coach, seriously injured, near the front. Strinz had been driving the bus.

The crash killed Strinz and 19-year-old Kiley Jones, who played first-base on the team. It injured the eight other people on the bus, police and school officials said.

Almost a week later, Richardson is still trying to make sense of the day of the crash.

“We played, I think, the best softball we’ve ever played before,” Richardson told The Oregonian/OregonLive. “Everybody was super-involved in the game and in super high spirits.”

Coach Strinz took them all out to eat after the victory, and then the team piled into two buses and began the trek home down the winding roads of Oregon Route 42.

Tired from the day’s events, Richardson laid down on the floor of the bus at Frable’s feet and fell asleep.

She woke up when she felt the bus swerve, but she doesn’t remember much else before she found herself on the side of the road, staring at the knocked-over bus.

Her teammate Haven Frable has better memories of the crash and its aftermath. After she helped Richardson and others get out of the bus, she fished out her phone and called her parents.

Within minutes, her father Colin Frable was out the door of their Roseburg house, en route to the scene of the crash near milepost 23 in the area of Coquille.

Haven’s mother, Audrey Frable, called a friend and began praying. Her husband sent updates from the chaotic scene once he arrived.

As first responders went about their work, a couple pulled their car over and handed out blankets and charged players’ phones. A semi-truck driver also stopped and helped out.

First responders found Jones dead at the scene, and they rushed Strinz to a hospital, where she later died from her injuries, officials said.

The team and their families are now mourning the loss of Jones and Strinz. Most of the surviving players remain in shock.

Jones was “one of those people where you could just be in the same room with her and she just lit it up,” Haven Frable said. “She was just such a radiant person.”

Frable and Richardson both described Strinz as being like a second mother to them, someone they could talk to for hours about academics and life.

“Anytime I would go to her with any issues that I had or when I was stressed out about stuff, she wouldn’t just say, you’re gonna get through this,” Richardson said. “She would specifically say, we’ll get through this, so she made sure to let me know that I wasn’t alone.”

In the hours after the crash, medics drove the surviving team members to hospitals in Coquille and Coos Bay.

Doctors soon found that, in addition to a gash on her leg, Richardson had a potentially severe brain injury. She was flown to OHSU, where a neurosurgeon was on standby, her mother Joy Whitcomb said. As it turned out, her condition eventually stabilized and surgery wasn’t needed. She was discharged about a day later.

Haven Frable also was discharged from the hospital the day after the crash, and she’s continuing to heal at home.

The other players in the crashed bus are in various stages of physical recovery.

Haven Frable said the injured players and other members of the team are all “sad and heartbroken,” but they’re also still struggling simply with the reality of it, that it really happened.

“I don’t think it’s fully set in,” she said, “how big of a deal everything is yet.”