DRYDEN – A 59-year-old man, Wenatchee, died Wednesday afternoon when the tractor he was driving was hit on Highway 2 in Dryden.
The Washington State Patrol said Rubén Pacheco Lopez was driving a Kubota fruit tractor west on the road at 1:20 p.m. when Leavenworth’s 32-year-old driver Derick Kuch finished the tractor in a Dodge Dakota van at the back of the road. Pacheco shot out of the tractor and got trapped underneath. He pleaded dead at the scene.
One passenger in the van, Deepak Gohil, 32, of Seattle, was injured and transported by ambulance to Washington Central Hospital. Kuch and two young men in his vehicle, aged five and six, were not injured. The young men were buckled in the vehicle, the infantry soldiers said, but Kuch was not buckled.
Infantrymen say they will look for unspecified fares in the turn of fate opposite Kuch. Westbound traffic on the road was subsidized for about 3 miles, almost to Cashmere, the investigation.