Meeker teenager injured in Saturday crash

MEEKER — A local teenager suffered a broken leg in a two-vehicle crash last Saturday, but it could have been much worse, his father said.
Jon Mack Sheridan, 13, son of Paul and Shannon Sheridan, had the tibia on his right leg broken in the accident late last Saturday afternoon on Highway 13, about 20 miles from Meeker.
“He’s doing pretty well,” his father, Paul “Buckshot” Sheridan said Tuesday. “He was ejected out of the back window (of the pickup truck) and landed in a snow bank. He had a lap belt on, but not a shoulder belt, so it just ejected him backward. He was pretty darn lucky, though.”
Sheridan said his son will have surgery today in Grand Junction.
“He has to have surgery to reset that bone,” Sheridan said. “They just sort of push it into place. Then they will put him in a cast, and he will stay in that for eight weeks.”
He said his son hopes to return to school as soon as Friday.
“They’ll get him a wheelchair and crutches and he’ll be able to get around,” Sheridan said.
Jon Mack was returning from a hunting trip in Alabama with Lee Bone and Jason Smith, who rent from the Sheridans and who work in the Piceance Basin. Both Bone and Smith are from Alabama.
Bone, the driver of the pickup, had two ribs broken in the accident, Sheridan said, and Smith, a passenger in the front seat, suffered a hematoma on the inside of his right leg.
The pickup, which was pulling a flatbed trailer with another truck on it, was traveling north when it lost control and crossed into the southbound lane, said Sgt. Pat Darrow of the Rio Blanco County Sheriff’s Office. A car, traveling southbound in the other lane, struck the passenger side of the pickup.
The driver of the car that struck the pickup was flown to St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Junction. Darrow said the driver of the car, Debbra Nicholas-Olson of Sheridan, Wyo., suffered the “most serious” injuries.
Jon Mack had flown to Alabama for the hunting trip and was on his way home when the accident occurred.
“They had just drove across the country, and they were 18 miles from home when this happened,” Sheridan said.