- Baptist Press - https://www.baptistpress.com -

Wyo. convention staffer, daughter killed in wreck

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CASPER, Wyo. (BP)–A Wyoming Southern Baptist Convention staff member and his infant daughter were killed March 26 in an automobile accident during blizzard conditions.

David Shane Ewen, 33, and his sixth-month-old daughter, Elizabeth, were killed in central Wyoming when his vehicle collided with another vehicle on Highway 28, some 55 miles south of Lander, Wyo., according to a Wyoming Highway Patrol report cited in the Associated Press. Ewen’s wife, Cassandra R. Ewen, 32, survived the crash and remains in a Billings, Mont., hospital. The infant was in a child restraint seat.

Ewen had served as the Wyoming convention’s church health strategist interim for less than six months.

“He was just a fine guy,” Quin Williams, pastor of Boyd Avenue Baptist Church in Casper and president of the state convention, told Baptist Press. “He was very smart, extremely talented verbally and musically. He was an excellent violinist, a very good guitarist. He could sing well. In fact, he did the program for our church’s Valentine’s banquet and did an outstanding job.”

The snow storm that led to Ewen’s death also was involved in multi-car accident on Interstate 80 that killed six in the southern part of the state. A 150-mile stretch of the interstate was closed that night. The accident involving Ewen occurred during a “white out,” a blinding snow storm in which “visibility is zero,” Williams said. “It’s usually a blowing and falling snow.”

Ewen held master’s degrees from Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He came to Wyoming from a church in Colorado.

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Funeral arrangements are still pending. Doctors, Williams said, “are optimistic” about Cassandra Ewen’s survival.

“She has already had one extensive surgery repairing a number of injuries,” he said, adding she had some neck damage. “As far as we know now, there is no paralysis. … She is aware of her child and her husband’s death.”
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