Dateline: December 13, 2007

Wreck hospitalizes CC instructor   

A Clarendon College instructor remains hospitalized this week after being seriously injured in a one-vehicle accident last Wednesday.

DPS Trooper Daniel Hawthorne said 36-year-old Melissa McCoy of Amarillo apparently fell asleep about 15 miles east of Claude while going southbound on US 287.

McCoy’s 2007 Honda Pilot SUV jumped a creek, flipped forward on its nose, and came to rest on its top, Hawthorne said. McCoy was wearing her seat belt.

A trucker traveling behind McCoy discovered the accident and called emergency personnel from Claude, who extracted McCoy with the Jaws of Life.

Co-workers at Clarendon College are filling in for McCoy and staying in touch with the family. Tuesday afternoon they received good news about her condition.

“Melissa is responding to stimuli and to people talking to her,” fellow instructor Pam Denney said. “She is slowly being brought out of her induced coma.”

Denney said McCoy is in the Surgical ICU at Northwest Texas Hospital in Amarillo.