Answers absent in fatal wrong-way crash

It wasn't booze or drugs, but investigators still don't how Katherine Cullen ended up going the wrong way on Interstate 40 and dying in a head-on collision that also killed the other driver.

The Wednesday night crash in Tijeras Canyon east of Albuquerque now has friends and relatives grieving and investigators sayings it could be another week before they'll be able to tell what happened.

Wrong-way drivers on the freeway often are intoxicated, but that does not appear to be the case here, according to the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Department.

“So it makes the question of why this happened, and how did the person come to be going east in westbound I-40, much more complicated,” sheriff's Lt. David Knowles told KRQE News 13.

There is nothing complicated about Judith Bjorkman’s role in the crash. The 58-year-old Edgewood woman was in the wrong place at the wrong time driving west in her Ford Expedition when Cullen's Jeep hit her.

Both women died while a 2-year-old boy properly strapped into the back seat of Bjorkman's Ford survived with minor injuries.

It's possible Cullen entered the freeway on the exit ramps at Carnuel 0.5 miles west of the crash or two miles to the west at Tramway Boulevard in Albuquerque. The Carnuel ramp has warning signs facing wrong-way drivers, but the Tramway exit does not.

Knowles said there are other factors to consider as well.

“It was dark; it was cold,” he said. “We're in the holiday season now; people are starting to rush around.

"I'm not saying this is what happened. I'm saying these elements could have played a part into it.”

Investigators are now reviewing the 911 calls that reported Cullen's Jeep going the wrong way in the moments before the crash.

“A double-fatal accident we treat just like a homicide,” Knowles added. “We have a lot of evidence to sift through.

"We take our time. We don't have a knee-jerk reaction to it.”

While deputies said it doesn't appear that drugs or alcohol contributed to the crash they've ordered toxicology tests, just to be sure.