A serious two-car accident took place at approximately 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, June 28 four miles south of Brooten on Stearns County Road 18 and its intersection with Stearns County Road 19.
At 5:18 p.m., a LifeLink III helicopter left the scene heading to St. Cloud, and soon after, an ambulance took off.
Pending an initial report from the Stearns County Sheriff's department or the Minnesota State Patrol, no further information on the accident will be published tonight (June 28). Family members of those involved with the accident need to learn sensitive details of the accident through the proper channels and not on the Internet or social media.
*Update on Thursday morning: a report has been released by the Stearns County Sheriff's department. Names were not included. The sheriff's office was assisted on the scene by the Minnesota State Patrol, the Brooten Ambulance, the Brooten Fire Department and Life Link Air Ambulance. The 9-1-1 call came in from a bystander at 4:32 p.m.
The Bonanza Valley Voice pleads with the public to refrain from posting first or second-hand information or rumors on social media. It will not kill anyone to exercise the self-restraint to not post or share such information or rumors tonight and over night. You will not die if you wait until tomorrow to post "R.I.P." messages on Facebook or SnapChat, etc.!
*Update at 10:42 p.m. on Wednesday: over six hours have passed since the accident, and the Voice still does not know who was involved in the accident. That's good! What that means is that the Facebook channels in our circle have not been littered with details or names of who was involved. To be blunt, the whole point of what was written earlier was to get to the end of the day without seeing names plastered all over social media. We wanted to buy time for the families involved. Did it work? We don't know, but we tried. Hopefully it got a few people to think about what the proper course of action is in times like this. News organizations constantly receive information, filter and edit it, and then release it to the public. This happens on a daily and weekly basis. This newspaper decided what the public would find out from us right away, a very basic set of details, and at the same time made the decision to withhold a long list of other information. Other newspapers will do things differently, and that's their right.
It was a tough day for many people in our small, rural community. Tomorrow will be a new day with a new set of challenges.
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