Man Dies After Being Trapped For Hours In Crashed SUV Near Sand Springs

A Sand Springs man is dead after state troopers say he was trapped in his SUV for hours after he crashed into a ravine near Chandler Park in west Tulsa.

The Highway Patrol said two troopers did everything they could to keep Halston Gains alive. They gave him first aid at the scene and kept him conscious until paramedics arrived.

Trooper Dwight Durant said, "I'm just really proud of them. They did an outstanding job."

After getting a call from the Gaines' family around 4 a.m. that he never made it home, OHP sent out Troopers Jon Cotner, Jonathan Lipe and Colt Duncan to look for the man's SUV.

The Highway Patrol said, on a section of Avery Drive, just east of Highway 97, is a very dangerous stretch of road. It's not lit very well at night and it's narrow. So when troopers got the call of the accident, they knew almost exactly where to go.

In pitch black, on Avery Drive, Lipe spotted a Chevy Suburban about 60 feet below the road in a ravine.

Lipe and Cotner crawled down a steep embankment and found Gaines on the floorboard, bleeding from his head. They got a med kit from a cruiser, bandaged his head and talked to him.

Cotner said, "I just kept talking to him, you know. Asking him, 'Are you hurt, are you cold, what can I do for you? Is there anything I can do to make you a little more comfortable?' You know, just kinda, ‘Hang tight with me.'"

Durant called his troopers heroic, but the three men said they were just doing their job.

"I wouldn't call it heroic. I mean, we didn't do anything that any other person that came up on something like that would do," Cotner said.

Eventually, EMSA got there and took Gaines to the hospital in critical condition.

Troopers still don't know why he went off the road, but Cotner said, "He would still be out here if the family hadn't realized he didn't come home and came out here and called us."

The Highway Patrol is still investigating why Gaines went off the road. The OHP report said Gaines was not wearing a seat belt at the time of the crash.