Mendocino County girl, 17, dies of burns from Redwood Valley fire

Kressa Shepherd, a 17-year-old from Redwood Valley, died Sunday night at a Sacramento hospital three weeks after sustaining severe burns in the Redwood fire in Mendocino County, her aunt said.

Shepherd was a junior at Ukiah High School. Both her legs had been amputated and she had never regained consciousness at the hospital, said her aunt, Mindi Ramos of Ukiah.

The teen became the 43rd victim of the wildfires that have ravaged the North Bay but are now almost completely contained.

Shepherd and her brother, Kai Logan Shepherd, 14, are among the now nine people killed in the fast-moving wildfire on the north end of Redwood Valley.

Her parents, Jon and Sara Shepherd, were also burned and are at separate hospitals. Neither has been told about their children’s deaths, Ramos said.

Ramos said she was advised in a telephone call from Shriners Hospital for Children that Kressa wasn’t registering pain during a change of the dressing on her burns. Doctors performed a CAT scan on her brain and according to Ramos determined she was brain-dead.

“They turned off the ventilator and let her go,” Ramos said.

The four Shepherds had tried to outrun the flames in two vehicles early Oct. 9, coming down from an unnamed mountain on their driveway, called Sweetland Drive, where they lived in a house Jon Shepherd built on 80 acres of land.

They apparently left the vehicles and ran. Kai Logan was found dead near the family home.

Kressa and her mother were found by a neighbor. Jon Shepherd, 44, was found near the main road, West Road.

He sustained burns over 45 percent of his body and is at St. Francis Memorial Hospital’s burn unit in San Francisco.

Sara Shepherd, 40, was burned over 60 percent of her body and is hospitalized in stable condition at UC Davis Medical Center, in Sacramento.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 707-521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @guykovner.