Update: fatal car crash victim identified

Published 1:09 pm Wednesday, April 1, 2015

The San Juan County Sheriff’s Department identified 36-year-old Corey Fletcher as the victim of a fatal collision Monday on Lopez Island.

Fletcher died of severe injuries suffered in a single-car, rollover collision in the early afternoon of March 30. Fletcher was found inside an overturned vehicle and unconscious when deputies arrived at the scene at about 2:30 p.m.

He was determined to be deceased at the scene.

Fletcher was eastbound in the 200 block of Islandale Road and traveling at a high-rate of speed when he apparently lost control of the four-door Volkswagon sedan he was driving while on a fairly straight stretch of roadway, according to Undersheriff Brent Johnson.

The sedan went into a counter-clockwise spin and struck several trees along the side of the roadway before coming to a stop, upside down, Johnson said. The 36-year-old was wearing a seatbelt at the time of the collision, he added.

An autopsy is being conducted by the Snohomish Medical Examiner.

Johnson confirmed that Fletcher, a Lopez Island resident, had been pulled over for speeding the day before the fatal crash and let go with a warning.

Fletcher is the second person to die in a single-vehicle collision in San Juan County in the past five months. A 43-year-old Orcas Island man died in mid-November after losing control of his motorcycle on an S-curve on Upper Deer Harbor Road and struck a tree, less than a mile from home.

Islandale Road, located at the south end of the island, is the primary road connecting the neighborhoods of Hunter and Mud bays to Mud Bay Road.