photo by: Google Maps

The red marker denotes the Lawrence Service Area near mile marker 209 on the Kansas Turnpike.

A Lawrence teen was seriously injured on Wednesday morning after crashing head-on with another vehicle, which left a passenger in that vehicle dead.

Kaiden Jimenez, 18, was driving a 2025 Honda Civic east on Interstate 70 around 8:30 a.m. on the Kansas Turnpike just past the Douglas County line near the Lawrence Service Area in Leavenworth County when he went off the road into the left ditch, according to a crash report from the Kansas Highway Patrol.

Jimenez’s vehicle bounced off two drain tubes in the ditch and continued on into the westbound lanes of traffic where it struck head-on a 2023 Mercedes Benz van, driven by Jonathan Brown, 34, of Kansas City, Missouri.

Brown’s vehicle then spun and slid backward into the ditch and hit an embankment, which knocked the van onto its side. Brown was also seriously injured while his passenger, 28-year-old Shane Greiner, of Kansas City, Kansas, was killed in the crash, according to the report.

Jimenez was taken to Stormont Vail hospital in Topeka, and Brown was taken to Overland Park Regional Medical Center.

All three men were wearing seat belts, according to the KHP report.