Under normal circumstances, it takes about 20 minutes to drive from Napavine to Centralia.
Tim Baxter made the drive in less than eight minutes the evening of April 28 when he got the call that his brother, Jesse, was severely injured in a crash at the intersection of West Pear and South Pearl streets in Centralia.
“It was my brother’s best friend, and he’s like, ‘Your brother just got into a head-on wreck with a truck and he ain’t breathing.’ And I was obviously shocked, and then I can hear my mom screaming in the background,” Tim told a Chronicle reporter last week.
The crash was reported just after 8:55 p.m. on Friday, April 28.
Jesse Baxter, 32, of Centralia, had been riding a 2001 Harley Davidson motorcycle with his wife, Kassie Baxter, 39, as his passenger on South Pearl Street when the front of the motorcycle collided into the passenger side of a 2019 Toyota Tacoma pickup truck that was crossing the intersection on West Pear Street.
The driver of the pickup, identified as a 65-year-old Centralia man, was uninjured.
Jesse was given CPR at the scene before being transported to Providence Centralia Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
“He’s a big, tough guy. You don’t want to think that he’s gone,” Tim said, adding that first responders were still doing CPR on Jesse when he arrived at the scene of the crash. “I just knew in the back of my head, ‘You can’t give somebody CPR for that long. But I’m happy they kept going. They did it all the way to the hospital.”
Kassie was also transported to Providence Centralia Hospital in critical condition. She was ultimately transferred to Harborview Medical Center, where she was in a coma for almost 28 days and underwent multiple surgeries before she woke up.
“Harborview, they’re one of the best hospitals in the country … and they said that they believe in science, not miracles. But with her, it’s a miracle, because they’ve never had anybody in the history of the hospital come in with that much damage and survive,” Tim said.
Kassie was out of the hospital and continuing to recover at home as of Aug. 18, her family said.
While Jesse’s family is immensely grateful for Kassie’s recovery and the support they’ve received from the Centralia community in the months following the crash, Jesse’s death is still profoundly felt.
“He lived life to the fullest. He and his wife were everybody’s best friends,” Jesse’s mother, Rhonda Baxter, said of her son.
Tim and Rhonda described Jesse as someone who was dependable, welcoming and could get along with anyone, but had a strong protective streak.
“No matter how heavy the payload was, he would just take it on and be kind and positive about it … Very humble, very nice, (but) vicious when he needed to be, almost like a papa bear,” Tim said, recalling instances when Jesse stood up for Tim when he needed it and spent time with Tim’s kids.
Most recently, Tim said, Jesse took his 5-year-old son, Paxton, and one of Tim’s kids to a fishing derby at Fort Borst Lake in Centralia that Tim wasn’t keen on going to.
Tim did end up tagging along to that derby, he said.
“I’m actually very thankful that I went because that’s the last time that I saw my brother,” he said.
•••
Finding closure has been difficult for Jesse’s family due to what they believe to be law enforcement’s mishandling of the collision investigation.
A Washington State Patrol investigator determined the motorcycle’s speed, which he calculated as “in excess of 58 miles per hour” in a 25 mph zone, was the primary cause of the crash.
According to the state patrol, the motorcycle was initially in the left lane behind a truck, but merged into the right lane just before the crash.
In an interview with a Centralia police officer that’s quoted in the state patrol’s report, the driver of the pickup said he saw the truck when he was at the stop sign and said, “I had plenty of room to go with the truck that was coming, I went, that’s when they (the motorcycle) come flying around … it happened so fast.”
The investigator noted the driver of the pickup left the scene before he arrived, as a Centralia police officer conducted an interview and cleared him to leave.
Jesse’s family said that the Centralia officer conducting the initial investigation got the pickup driver’s version of events first and proceeded to disregard other witnesses' accounts.
“He just got his story and that was it. He didn’t care about what anybody else said,” Tim said. “I just felt that the whole thing was handled wrong.”
Tim and Rhonda said the officer did not stop someone from “rifling through” the pickup truck at the scene until a bystander prompted him, and described that officer’s general conduct at the scene as “rude” and “disrespectful.”
A witness who only identified themself by the initials K.R.S. has since sent a letter to the Centralia City Council complaining about the officer’s behavior at the scene, calling the officer’s conduct “unprofessional” and “biased.”
Another factor that was upsetting to Jesse’s family, Tim and Rhonda said, was that law enforcement personnel didn’t collect Jesse’s and Kassie’s belongings from the scene and didn’t keep track of who had them. Eventually, the family found out a private tow company picked up the belongings when it retrieved the motorcycle.
Based on what they gathered from witnesses themselves, Jesse’s family believes the pickup driver did a “California stop,” slowing down but not fully stopping, at the stop sign before driving through the intersection.
In the interview with the Centralia officer, the pickup driver described his stop at the stop sign as “brief,” according to the state patrol’s report. The state patrol investigator did note the pickup driver’s “failure to bring his vehicle to a complete stop at the stop sign” was a contributing factor to the crash.
Tim and Rhonda said their insurance told them Jesse was 25% at fault for the crash. Investigators have told them no action would be taken unless they found him another factor that made him more culpable. Specifically, they said, they’re waiting for the results of a voluntary blood test to determine whether or not the pickup driver was impaired at the time of the crash.
The pickup driver consented to a breathalyzer test at the scene, which came back with no signs of impairment, according to the state patrol’s report.
“His insurance is probably going to get him a new vehicle but his insurance is only going to give out $25,000 for loss of life,” Rhonda said.
“Somebody needs to be held accountable,” Tim said. “Accidents happen all the time, and people get in trouble for it.”
Today, a vigil is maintained at the site of the crash, with a cross and other items displayed at the intersection of South Pearl and Pear streets.
