Promising young Texan became victim of Kansas Turnpike deluge

Twenty-one-year-old Zachary Clark was headed back to his summer internship with the Catholic Diocese in Minnesota when his 2011 Mustang reportedly hydroplaned off the Kansas Turnpike on Friday into floodwater.

And Barry Clark lost a son any parent would be proud of.

The Kansas Turnpike Authority on Saturday identified Zachary Clark, of Keller, Texas, as the motorist whose car hydroplaned off the pavement about six miles south of Emporia before being swept into floodwater in the northbound ditch. His body was found beyond his car.

The tragedy occurred two miles north of Jacob Creek, where in 2003 flash flooding swept cars into the creek, killing six people: a mother and her four children and a man who was trying to rescue people from their cars.

Last summer, Zachary Clark worked as a summer intern for Fox News in New York, was asked back, Barry Clark said. Zachary was the oldest of two sons and was heading into his senior year at the University of Dallas, a private Catholic school in Irving. He had a gift for writing that lent itself to journalism. But the young man felt a different calling, his father said. He wanted to become a therapist or counselor for emotionally troubled youth, and that’s what drew him to intern with the Diocese, Barry Clark said Saturday in a telephone interview.

“We look for continued prayers of support for our tragic loss,” the 53-year-old father said. “I know he’s in heaven because he’s a very, very fine man.”

Rachel Bell, spokeswoman for Kansas Turnpike Authority, said Saturday that Zachary Clark’s car was the only vehicle that went off the road during the torrential rain.

Officials don’t know what the extent of the water on the highway was when Clark’s vehicle hydroplaned, but other “cars were really still getting by,” she said.

The young man had a week off from his internship and was headed back from northern Texas to Minnesota and planning to stop in Des Moines for the night, Barry Clark said.

There were eyewitnesses to his son’s accident, he said.

The Highway Patrol has an ongoing investigation into how it occurred, Bell said.

“Unfortunately we can’t plan for downpours … like we saw yesterday,” she said Saturday afternoon.

The Turnpike Authority on Saturday released a statement saying the accident occurred about 5 p.m. Friday when the northbound vehicle “hydroplaned and lost control on the wet roadway at MM (mile marker) 118 on the Kansas Turnpike/I-35. The vehicle left the roadway and entered an area of rapidly moving floodwater in the northbound ditch. This was due to the flash flooding that was occurring in the area.” That is based on a preliminary KHP investigation.

On Friday, KHP Lt. Mark Christesen said the car hydroplaned off the road and into a ditch in an area that “had just received torrential rains. The fields and creeks were flooded in the area.”

According to Christesen’s account, the car began floating in the water, and the current drew it into a culvert underneath the interstate, where it was sucked through. The driver was trying to get out of the car before it went through, Christesen said, but was “about half-in, half-out” when it went through.

The car ended up 50 to 75 yards downstream, and the driver was found about 40 feet from the vehicle.

The interstate was closed for a while because emergency vehicles “were doing everything they could to reach the driver,” Bell said.

This story was originally published July 11, 2015 at 5:41 PM with the headline "Promising young Texan became victim of Kansas Turnpike deluge."