At approximately 6:00 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 14, the Wyoming Highway Patrol was called to the scene of an accident on Highway 189 at mile marker 8.9.  A driver in a red Subaru Outback with Utah plates, heading south on 189, had hit a deer and the vehicle had come to rest in the middle of the highway.  The Subaru had been rendered totally disabled and all lights had been knocked out.  Both the driver side and passenger side airbags had deployed and two people who had been in the vehicle exited the car — 66-year-old Amy Castillo and her son-in-law Alan Wilder, 34 years, both from Salt Lake City, Utah.

WHP Sergeant Remington Roberts told the Herald, “It was very dark so the Subaru was nearly impossible to see.  When we arrived, there were two other vehicles that had stopped and pulled off to the side of the road to the east of the accident with their headlights still on.”

Roberts said someone from one of the parked cars told him they had walked over to the wreck and led the woman who was in the Subaru over to the parked cars. A witness said the woman, Castillo, seemed to be in shock, had trouble seeing and was confused.  Witnesses told Roberts that they were trying to determine how to move the Subaru from the middle of the highway and Wilder had returned to the Subaru and was sitting in the driver’s side of the car, attempting to see if he could get it started. Unknown to the witnesses, Castillo had wandered over to stand by the driver’s side of the car and was on her phone with the 911 operator when a Mitsubishi Lancer traveling north hit the Subaru, glancing off the front of it and hitting Castillo fatally.

The 17-year-old youth driving the Mitsubishi and his 18-year-old passenger, both from Kemmerer, told Roberts that they had slowed down when they saw the lights of the other two vehicles. The driver said he had turned his head to look at the headlights, wondering what was going on. A second later, when he turned his head back, the Subaru was right in front of his car and he said he swerved to the right to attempt to miss it, but the Mitsubishi glanced off the front of the Subaru and hit Castillo as she stood next to the disabled vehicle. 

The teen driver told Roberts that it was very dark and the headlights of the two parked vehicles on the left of the highway had no hazard lights flashing. 

Roberts told the Herald that the second vehicle that had pulled off did have its hazard lights on but the vehicle in front of it blocked the hazard lights from the view of anyone traveling toward the accident from the south.

“This was a tragic accident and no fault of the driver of the Mitsubishi,” Roberts said.

“It was very sad for all involved.”