Saturday afternoon started out like any other weekend in Eastern Kentucky. Families were out running errands, visiting relatives, and traveling along the scenic Hal Rogers Parkway. But around three in the afternoon, tragedy hit a familiar stretch of road in Leslie County. A sudden head-on crash ended up taking two lives and leaving a whole region heartbroken.
Among those lost was 64-year-old Penny Ison, a resident of Cornettsville, Kentucky. She was riding as a passenger in a Ford Expedition heading east along the parkway. It was supposed to be just a routine trip through the hills, but everything changed in an instant near the 37-mile marker.
Out of nowhere, a red Nissan Juke traveling westbound crossed over the center yellow line. The smaller SUV drove straight into the path of the eastbound Ford Expedition. The two vehicles collided head-on at roughly 2:54 p.m., bringing traffic on the parkway to a screeching halt.
A trooper from Kentucky State Police Post 13 in Hazard happened to drive up on the scene shortly after the impact occurred. Emergency crews moved quickly to pull the victims from the damaged vehicles. First responders loaded Penny Ison into an ambulance and rushed her directly to nearby Mary Breckinridge Hospital.
Medical staff at the hospital worked hard to save her life. Sadly, her injuries were simply too severe to overcome. She passed away at the hospital shortly after arriving, where officials from the Leslie County Coroner’s Office officially pronounced her deceased.
The crash also left others in the Expedition severely injured. The driver of the SUV and a juvenile passenger both suffered serious trauma during the wreck. Due to the severity of their condition, emergency medical teams had to airlift both individuals to the University of Kentucky Medical Center in Lexington.
The driver of the oncoming Nissan, 17-year-old Taegan Mosley of Hyden, also died at the scene. As Detective Scott Caudill continues leading the collision reconstruction and state police await toxicology results, friends and neighbors in Cornettsville and Leslie County are left mourning a loss that hit way too close to home.
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