Child killed in two-vehicle crash near Derby (+video)

A girl between 2 and 3 years old is dead after a car she was in collided with a pickup truck near Derby early Sunday afternoon.

The crash was reported at about 2 p.m. in the 4500 block of South Rock Road.

Sedgwick County sheriff’s Capt. Mark Pierce said that a gray Pontiac G6 sedan was traveling south on Rock Road in the lane closest to the ditch.

“For some reason we still don’t know,” the sedan started sliding across the road and into the path of a northbound pickup, Pierce said.

The truck struck the car, which then came to rest heavily damaged in the east ditch.

The girl was a passenger in the vehicle, which was being driven by a 28-year-old woman, Pierce said.

The child was not breathing when Emergency Medical Services arrived. Medical professionals performed CPR on the child, but she was pronounced dead, Pierce said.

Both the driver of the sedan and the driver of the pickup, who is about 50 years old, were taken to area hospitals with life-threatening injuries, Pierce said. One went to Via Christi Hospital St. Francis and the other to Wesley Medical Center.

Pierce said there was a child seat in the vehicle, but investigators could not yet determine whether the child was in it at the time of the accident.

“They’re still working on that car, looking the seats over,” he said. “All of the restraint systems are being checked right now. Further investigation to come, but there is a child seat in the car.”

Investigators are working to determine the cause of the crash, he said.

A witness who was driving behind the sedan told police its back end slid, making it appear as if it slid on ice.

Deputies walked up and down the road and could find no ice or slick spots, Pierce said.

“The road is clearly wet,” he said. “It’s cold, but it’s not quite freezing on the roads right now, so we’re still looking into what happened there.”

Police were blocking Rock Road traffic at 39th Street and 55th Street.

This story was originally published November 29, 2015 at 4:19 PM with the headline "Child killed in two-vehicle crash near Derby (+video)."