A Bella Vista woman was killed after the car she was in crashed into Siloam Springs Intermediate School on Sunday evening, troopers said.
A 1999 Honda Accord was traveling west on Arkansas 43 approaching North Mount Olive Street when the wreck happened shortly after 7 p.m., according to a preliminary crash report from state police.
The vehicle was traveling “at a high rate of speed” as it continued through the intersection onto Cheri Whitlock Parkway, missed a curve and left the road, the report states. The car then reportedly struck a brick building.
Captain Derek Spicer of the Siloam Springs Police Department estimated the vehicle was speeding at 70 to 80 miles per hour.
Troopers said Natalie Lorraine Wiggins, 25, died as a result of the crash. The driver, a 32-year-old man from Bella Vista, and an 18-year-old woman passenger were injured and transported to Washington Regional Hospital in Fayetteville, the report states.
Troopers described conditions at the time of the crash as clear and dry.
The Honda is at least the second vehicle this year to hit strike a building on the school's grounds. In early January, the driver of a pickup lost control of his vehicle, went through a ditch and hit the gym wall, leaving several holes, according to district officials.
The driver left the vehicle and police believe the suspect was picked up by another vehicle, Spicer said in January.
On Sunday, the car appeared to hit the building about 40 feet north of where the first vehicle hit the gym in January, according to Superintendent Jody Wiggins, who is no relation to passenger Natalia Wiggins. This time the car didn’t hit a ditch or fire hydrant to slow them down and appeared to do a lot more damage, he said.
Engineers inspected the building on Monday and again on Tuesday morning after some block had been removed to expose a beam and found the building to be structurally sound, according to Assistant Superintendent Shane Patrick.
Workers were in the process of building a construction wall along the east side of the school gym on Tuesday, and Patrick said he was hopeful that students could use the gym again by Thursday. The facility is used for physical education and socially-distanced band classes, he said.
“We have been very careful to make sure the building is safe for students and staff,” Patrick said. “We want to get them back in there as soon as possible, but safety is the first priority.”
Contractors had just finished putting a coat of paint on the inside wall repairs from the previous accident on Saturday, Wiggins said. There was still some work to be completed on the outside, but the inside work was finished.
The second accident was far enough away from the first that it didn’t damage any of the repairs that were already made, Patrick said.
Wiggins guessed that the school had been in place for the past 20 years and the road has been there for a number of years as well, he said.
“We’ve never had an issue before the past two months,” he said.
The district plans to put some kind of a barrier between the school and road to protect the school from being hit again, but Wiggins said he doesn’t know what that will look like yet.
At least 80 people have died as a result of crashes on Arkansas roads so far this year, according to a summary report from the Arkansas Department of Public Safety.