MIDDLETOWN, Calif. – A Middletown teenager and her family are seeking information from the community in order to find out more about the cause of a November crash that resulted in the loss of her arm.

Kya Hill, 17, a senior at Middletown High School, was seriously injured in the crash on Nov. 3, 2011, on Highway 29 a few miles over the Napa County line and six and a half miles north of Tubbs Lane, as Lake County News reported.

Hill was riding with her boyfriend, Samuel Weatherwax of Middletown, in his pickup that evening, heading south over Mount St. Helena, when the pickup lost traction, went off the road and hit a rock embankment, the California Highway Patrol’s Napa Area office reported.

In the collision Hill sustained injuries that led to the loss of her right arm.

An in-depth CHP investigation found what may have been the crash’s main factor – an officer stepped in and slipped on “an unknown slippery substance” on the right half of the southbound traffic lane, where Weatherwax had been driving.

The officer wrote in the report that he was unable to confirm what the substance was.

The substance was 100 feet long by 2 feet wide, according to the CHP report.

The report ruled that the cause was “other than driver,” as Weatherwax “could not have foreseen the slippery substance on the roadway as he negotiated a curve on a dark mountainous roadway.”

Attorney Jesse Chrisp, who is representing Hill and her family, said the CHP has no leads as to what the substance was or its source.

Now Hill and her family are reaching out to the community to ask if anyone saw a roadway spill occur on Highway 29 over Mount St. Helena that night.

Because the spill was so large, Chrisp said it’s believed to have come either from a semi truck or a commercial vehicle hauling some substance from Lake County into Napa County.

Prior to the crash, Hill had enlisted in the U.S. Army for eight years. Because of the loss of her arm, her military career plans have ended, Chrisp said.

He said Hill now is planning to go to college, but she is having to learn how to live without her arm.

Anyone with information about this spill is asked to call Chrisp's office at 707-994-0529.

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