Officer Patterson’s Patrol Car in the Oroville equipment yard behind the Depot Museum. Covered with a blue tarp, much of the wreckage is hidden from view, but emergency personal at the scene described the damage caused by the collision with a cow on Hwy.

SPOKANE – Officer Christopher Patterson, seriously injured when his patrol car collided with a cow on U.S. Highway 97, is showing marked improvements, according to Oroville Police Chief Clay Warnstaff.

“He called me this morning from his room at the hospital and said he had just gone for a walk in the hallway using a walker,” Chief Warnstaff reported to the Oroville City Council and Mayor at their Tuesday, July 7 meeting.

Patterson sustained serious injuries when his patrol car hit a cow in the northbound lane of U.S. Highway 97 approximately nine miles south of Oroville on Wednesday, July 24 at 1:30 a.m. He was being treated for head trauma, according to the Washington State Patrol, which is investigating the accident.

Warnstaff said the plan was to move the police officer from ICU to the rehabilitation floor and from their to move him to St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Center.

“He remembers everything up to the point of the cow,” Warnstaff said. “He remembered after some prompting the DV complaint and the names of the people involved.”

The chief said it was not unusual for people to block out some parts of an accident as a “defense mechanism.”

Patterson’s patrol car, a late model Chevrolet Impala, was destroyed in the crash.