APD: DRIVER WAS ‘SHOWING OFF’

Speed and alcohol are likely factors in crash that killed 3

Ivy Sanderson has a broken back and neck, can’t move her entire left side and can breathe only through a tube.

The 27-year-old is unable to speak from her hospital bed. But she can cry.

“Tears will come down the side of her face,” said her father, Reginald Sander- son. “You just wish you could take the pain away for her, but you can’t.”

Still, he says she is one of the lucky ones.

Two of her close friends — Taeshieva Slowman, 36, and Sondra Evans, 28 — were killed when a man driving them through Northeast Albuquerque early Friday morning crashed through a dead-end

street at more than 100 mph, police say.

David Bowie, 27, who was driving the car was also killed. His friend, David Griffin, 35, was injured. Both men are soldiers stationed at Fort Bliss near El Paso.

The groups had met some time before 3 a.m. in the parking lot of the Dirty Bourbon Dance Hall and Saloon near Montgomery and Eubank and decided to go for a ride.

Police said Bowie was speeding on Pennsylvania NE when he drove the silver Dodge through a dead end at Osuna.

“Bowie, who was showing off, was traveling north on Pennsylvania in excess of 100 mph,” Albuquerque police spokesman Tanner Tixier said.

The car hurled off the road and crashed into the Arroyo del Oso Golf Course. Passengers were thrown from the car.

Tixier said investigators believe alcohol, along with speed, was a factor in the crash.

“Two alcohol containers were found on scene,” he said.

Tixier said Griffin was in the front passenger seat and wearing his seat belt, and the women in the back seat were not.

Joseph Bowie, David Bowie’s elder brother, said they grew up in Tennessee. David Bowie joined the Army when he was 18 and was stationed at Fort Bliss, his brother told the Journal.

He said he wasn’t ready to say more about his brother or what happened.

Evans’ grandmother, Nancy Evans, said rescue workers contacted the family about an hour after the crash because they found Sondra Evans’ cellphone at the scene.

“You just break down, can’t believe ... no, no, no, no,” Nancy Evans said in a phone interview Monday. “No one expects anything like this to happen to themselves or someone they need. There’s got to be a mistake; it’s got to be someone else.”

She said Sondra Evans grew up multiple places — Arizona, Washington, D.C., and Albuquerque — before eventually graduating from Shiprock High School. She ran track in high school, Nancy Evans said.

She said Sondra moved to Albuquerque and became a physician’s assistant; she had a 7-year-old son.

“If you met her, she would be laughing and joking,” she said. “She loved being with people.”

The Slowman family did not return a phone call. A woman at Griffin’s home declined to be interviewed.

Reginald Sanderson said his daughter Ivy grew up in Farmington and graduated from Farmington High School. She studied optometry at San Juan College and now works for an eye doctor in Farmington.

Sanderson said he couldn’t believe it when he heard what had happened.

“I was down on the farm feeding the horses and my wife told me I needed to get back to town quick because our daughter had been in a horrific accident,” he said in a phone interview. “My whole body just went numb and I don’t think any parent wants to hear news like that.”

He said that, despite how hard it’s been, he knows it’s been as difficult for Bowie’s family, too.

“It’s been one terrible ordeal. I’ve been focusing on my little girl,” he said. “I just want to let them know that I, as a father and parent, forgive their son. What happened has happened.”