Limo in crash that killed 20 should not have been on road: N.Y. governor
The supersized limousine involved in a crash that killed 20 people outside an upstate New York country store recently failed a safety inspection and shouldn’t have been on the road, and the driver wasn’t properly licensed, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday.
The state ordered the owner, Prestige Limousine, shut down while an investigation continues into what caused Saturday’s wreck in Schoharie.
“In my opinion, the owner of this company had no business putting a failed vehicle on the road,” the governor said while attending a Columbus Day Parade in New York City. “Prestige has a lot of questions to answer.”
The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration also said it was investigating the crash, which involved a stretch limo that Cuomo said had been rebuilt in a way that violated federal law.
A call to Prestige Limousine’s office in Gansevoort rang unanswered Monday. Federal records
show the company has undergone five inspections and had four vehicles pulled from service in the last two years.
The crash killed two pedestrians and 18 occupants of the limousine, which was carrying four sisters, relatives and friends to a brewery for a birthday party, according to relatives.
Amanda Halse sent her own sister a text around 1 p.m. saying
she and her boyfriend, Patrick Cushing, had gotten in the limo and the group was headed to Brewery Ommegang in Cooperstown, according to her sister, Karina.
The crash happened before she got a chance to reply.
“My heart is sunken. It’s in a place where I’ve never felt this type of pain before,” Karina said as she visited the crash site Monday.
Amanda, 26, a waitress at a retirement community, was “a very strong and independent person” who didn’t like people to do things for her, according to her sister.
“She would be the one to initiate things,” she said.
Authorities didn’t say whether the limo occupants were wearing seat belts, give the speed of the limo or speculate what caused the limo to run a stop sign at an intersection and slam into a parked SUV by the Apple Barrel Country Store and Cafe. Autopsies were being performed, including on the driver, to see if drugs were alcohol were a factor.
The intersection is a known danger spot that has long worried locals, even after an overhaul following a deadly 2008 accident there, according to Apple Barrel manager Jessica Kirby.
Since the reconstruction, three tractor-trailers have run through the same stop sign and into a field behind her business, she said. Officials worked with the state to outlaw heavy trucks, she said, but there are still wrecks.