An 80-year-old Nevada woman was killed Tuesday afternoon in a three-vehicle accident on Highway 97 near Bend. The accident left car parts scattered over the width of the road and backed up traffic a quarter mile in both directions. Oregon State Police responded to the accident near The High Desert Museum a few miles south of Bend at 12:43 p.m. to find the driver of a lime green minivan, Barbara Virginia Peterson, of Winnemucca, Nev., dead at the scene. She carried no passengers.

Shortly after the accident, Donald Capron, 52, of Kirkland Wash., stood on the west side of the highway, his face spattered with blood. The driver’s side of his Nissan Pathfinder was crushed and the windshield smashed.

”I was in the left-hand lane and all of a sudden I saw a green car hit some dirt and lose control,” Capron said. ”It was careening right at me. All I could do is try and turn out of the way. Then I felt the impact and broken glass spray all around me. My little dog was thrown out of the car in the middle of the road. When I came to a stop, I wondered if I was alive or dead.”

Capron sustained no major injuries and his dog, a cream colored miniature poodle, Nicole, appeared to be uninjured as it paced around the Pathfinder.

Capron was traveling south, and a Dodge Ram 2500 4×4 pickup was behind him, said Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office Cpl. Vance Lawrence.

The green Ford Windstar minivan, which was traveling north, went off the side of the road and then veered back onto the highway, turning into oncoming traffic, Lawrence said.

The minivan sideswiped the Nissan and then hit the Dodge pickup head-on.

The driver of the Dodge, Bruce Dean Vittum, 56, of Bend was taken to St. Charles Medical Center via ambulance and treated for minor injuries. He carried no passengers in the pickup.

The Oregon Department of Transportation was called in to direct traffic through the crash area while Oregon State Police and the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office investigated. The cause of the accident remained under investigation, said Trooper Joseph Craig.

Alcohol is believed not to have been a factor in the accident, according to a sheriff’s office news release. The crash occurred on a straight stretch of pavement.

The minivan and the pickup came to rest in the center of the highway after the crash, forcing traffic to single lanes in both directions in the four-lane section of the highway. Orange cones were placed around the accident. A Bend fire engine and rescue truck and numerous police cars also surrounded the smashed vehicles.

Cars and trucks slowed down to a crawl as they were squeezed out onto the shoulders of the road to get through the area. The accident was cleared from the highway on Tuesday afternoon and normal traffic was restored.

Tom Peterson can be reached at 541-383-0304 or tpeterson@bendbulletin.com.