Identity of Linn County fatal crash victim released

The Linn County Sheriff’s Office has released the identity of a passenger who was killed Friday in wrong-way crash south of Marion.

Yoseph Wendafrash Abera, 18, of Somerset, N.J., was riding Friday in a 2003 Saturn being driven by Barnabas Destahun, 27, of Marion. The car was headed north on Highway 13 near Travis Road when it was hit by a 2010 Honda CR-V traveling in the wrong lane, according to a news release from the sheriff’s office.

Destahun and Natnael Wendafresh Abera, 20, of Highland Park, N.J. — the other passenger in the Saturn — were taken to a hospital with serious but non-life threatening injuries. The driver of the Honda — Katie Marie Austin Karkow, 32, of rural Cedar Rapids — was taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries, the release states.

The crash remained under investigation.

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