Posted at: 09/28/2012 6:26 PM
Updated at: 09/28/2012 6:46 PM
By: Gordon Severson

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3 Teens Injured in Thursday Night Car Crash

(ABC 6 NEWS) -- Three teenagers are lucky to be alive after a brutal car accident Thursday night.    

It happened in Elmira township on County Road 10 in Olmsted County at around 10pm. 

All three teens were rushed to Saint Marys hospital for non-life threatening injuries.    

One of them has already been released.    

Officials say they're lucky that's all that happened considering the circumstances. 

The accident happened when the driver got distracted by a text message the front passenger got on his cell phone.    

The car veered to the right and lost traction on the gravel shoulder.    

The driver overcompensated and lost control.    

That's when the car smashed into a tree and a light post.

Then rolled several times landing upside down and catching fire.    

Officials say it just goes to show that even minor distractions like this can easily cause an accident.

"It could be eating, it could be adjusting the radio, it could be playing with an ipod. It could be anything like that. We're seeing more and more of those types of accidents because people have cell phones and they have smart devices and younger people tend to be more easily distracted,” Olmsted County Sheriff’s Captain Bill Reiland says.

When our ABC 6 News crew was out on the scene they had the chance to speak with the woman who owned the property where this accident happened.

She recalls seeing the passenger pull both other boys out of the car before it burst into flames.    

Luckily they were all wearing their seatbelts which prevented them from being ejected from the car.

The woman also said the tree that the boys hit was just a few feet away from an LP gas tank.

The tank is big enough to hold several hundred gallons of fuel.