A 25-year-old Kennewick man died Thursday after losing control of the truck he was driving about 20 miles west of Walla Walla.
Daniel T. Zarate was headed west on Highway 12 in a Isuzu NPR truck when he went off the road at Nine Mile Hill just before 5 p.m., the Washington State Patrol said.
He overcorrected and slammed head on into a Ford F-350 heading in the opposite direction of the two-lane highway, the state patrol said. Zarate was wearing a seat belt but died at the scene.
It’s not clear why he lost control.
The other driver, Joshua P. Hoover, 37, of Burbank, was flown to Kadlec Regional Medical Center in Richland. Investigators say he wasn’t wearing his seat belt.
Hoover was stabilized and transferred to another medical facility, according to Kadlec officials.
The state patrol needed to shut down the rural Walla Walla County highway while they investigated the crash. This is the fourth fatal crash in the Tri-Cities area in less than a week. The other three were on Interstate 82.
Zarate was remembered as a loving and caring person, his aunt Chalissa Gazca said in a GoFundMe campaign she organized to help with funeral expenses.
“He was always there for everyone and was one of the humblest people I ever met,” she said. “He was a son, a brother, an uncle and a friend to many people.”
Source Agencies
