Coroner: Stroke caused from crash killed snowboarder

By RYAN SLABAUGH
Summit Daily News
Glenwood Springs, Colorado
March 28, 2008

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KEYSTONE — It seemed like a normal snowboarding crash to the friends of
Jennifer Ash, a 28-year-old Indianapolis woman who fell at Keystone on March
16. Seven days later, her friends learned it was anything but when Ash died
in a Denver hospital.

According to Summit County Coroner Joanne Richardson, Ash’s friends took her
to the Summit Medical Center near Frisco after the Sunday evening crash.

There, she was evaluated by doctors and rushed to St. Anthony’s Central
Hospital in Denver.

In Denver, doctors discovered her injuries were much worse than expected.

She had fallen on her buttocks, which created a “shockwave” up her spine and
caused a stroke. By March 23, Ash was pronounced brain dead.

The rarity of such accidents is what caused local authorities to pause on
releasing the information immediately, Richardson said.

“This is the first for me that I can recall,” Richardson said. “A stroke
caused by an accident happens more in cars. But after I talked to all the
neurologists, they said this is exactly what happened.”

The skier death, the county’s seventh, ties the record in Summit County set
in 2002.

According to the Martinsville Reporter-Times, Ash was born June 27, 1979, in
Indianapolis. She taught at Rutgers University in New Jersey for two years.

Most recently, she was a professor at Butler University in Indianapolis and
worked as a clinical pharmacist at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis.

She graduated from Mooresville High School in 1997 and earned her doctorate
in pharmacology from Butler University in 2003. While a student at Butler,
she was a member of Alpha Phi Sorority.