KMC emergency room staffer killed by drunk driver
By GRETCHEN WENNER, Californian staff writer
Emergency room workers at Kern Medical Center were stunned to learn a colleague had been killed by a drunk driver early Sunday while heading home after a night shift.
Carey Curtis, 26, died shortly after 4 a.m. when another woman crashed into her 1997 Nissan Sentra at the intersection of Wilson and Wible roads, officials say.
“We lost a very good part of our team,” said Curt Cabral, KMC’s emergency room director. “Our prayers and sympathy goes out to her family.”
Curtis, a Shafter resident, worked as a nursing assistant in the ER. She’d been on staff about five years, Cabral said, mostly working weekends while going to school full time. She has two children.
Curtis usually worked day shifts but had come in at 7 p.m. Saturday for the overnight shift.
The Bakersfield Police Department said Bakersfield resident Teresa Pina, 37, was drunk when she drove her 1999 Mercedes C230 south on Wible into Curtis’ eastbound Nissan.
The impact sent the Nissan into the wall of the Market Express at 2500 Wilson Road. Curtis, who was wearing a seat belt, died at the scene.
Pina was taken to KMC’s emergency room before being booked into jail on suspected charges of felony drunk driving and felony gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated.
Pina’s bail was set at $110,000, online jail records show. A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.
Most CommentedMost Popular
Since Karen Goh returned to Kern County from a publishing career in New York in 2004, she has helped foster a strong network of Christian leaders in government, politics, media, business and nonprofits.
A settlement has been reached in radio talk show host Inga Barks' sexual harassment lawsuit against former co-host Scott Cox and American General Media.
Is Kern County, as has widely been reported, really the expulsion capital of California? That's the question posed Friday by state Sen. Michael Rubio, D-Shafter, to 50 or so Kern County educators, elementary and high school district administrators and community leaders.
Here's a bit of news that I didn't expect. The Kern County District Attorney's office has launched an investigation into whether the Board of Supervisors' practice of routinely placing the job performance of County Administrative Officer John Nilon on the "closed session" portion of its agenda is...
Since Karen Goh returned to Kern County from a publishing career in New York in 2004, she has helped foster a strong network of Christian leaders in government, politics, media, business and nonprofits.
Young's Marketplace, an independent grocery store that's a Bakersfield institution, will close at the end of the week.
Bakersfield’s Faast Pharmacy is going out of business and will be acquired by the big chain CVS, it was confirmed Monday.
Amtrak is suing a Kern County truck driver for more than half a million dollars in connection with a 2010 train crash in Shafter that injured about 20 people.