Amish Family Of 6 Hospitalized When Jeep Rear-Ends Buggy At “Highway Speed” (Kansas)

A mother was airlifted with traumatic injuries and five other members of her family were taken to hospitals after a Jeep SUV struck their horse-drawn buggy Saturday in Coffey County, Kansas.

Here is the account from the Coffey County Sheriff’s Office, via KAKE:

The Coffey County Sheriff’s Office reports that around 5:35 p.m. on Fauna Road, a Jeep SUV pulled up behind a horse-drawn buggy and hit it from behind.

“The driver of the Jeep apparently did not see the buggy and hit the buggy from behind at highway speed,” said the sheriff’s office.

A mother, father and their four children were in the buggy. The mother was transported by helicopter to an unknown hospital for traumatic injuries.

The father and all four children were taken to area hospitals. The severity of their injuries has not been released. The man driving the Jeep was also taken to a hospital, making the total number of injured seven.

Sadly, the horse did not survive. Per the Sheriff’s Office release:

“The horse was injured beyond care and unfortunately had to be euthanized by officers on the scene at the direction of family members.”

Where is this family from?

One note on the reporting. None of the outlets have identified this as an Amish family, though Coffey County does have a small community, established in 2023, of only about 50 Amish people. They’re near the town of Waverly, in the northeast part of the county.

However, there’s one issue – the crash happened about 30 miles away from there. Could this have been a family making a long trip over the Labor Day weekend? Maybe, but that is quite a distance for a buggy to travel, really outside of typical range without stops.

Looking closer, there is a much more likely possibility. Neighboring Lyon County has a small Amish community, near the town of Hartford, around 7 miles or so from the crash scene. So that in all likelihood is the community of this family. There is a river and a recreation area not far from where the crash happened.

One more note to add, that might suggest why the buggy was hit at “highway speed”. If this was a buggy outside of the area of a horse-and-buggy community, area drivers are just not going to be expecting a buggy on the road.

That’s one hazard when Amish buggies travel outside of areas with established settlements, where drivers are going to be more aware of the possibility of a slow-moving, horse-drawn vehicle.

Kansas has never had a large plain population. But it’s been growing, with about a dozen small communities founded in the past twenty years. That means buggies are popping up on Kansas roads in places where local drivers have not had generations to get used to them.

This is the first of two rear-end crashes on small-settlement Amish families in a week in this region of the country. On Sunday, a driver rear-ended a buggy in Coal County, Oklahoma, flipping it into a ditch and injuring a family of seven in the Clarita community, a settlement of roughly 100 people. Due in part to the relatively low population, you don’t see too many accident reports from these Plains states, so two of them nearly back-to-back gets attention.

Prayers that this family will make it through. “Highway speed” sounds bad, and I just hope they have the best outcome possible.