20 die in N.Y. limo-suv crash
Officials: Worst U.S. transportation wreck in nearly decade
SCHOHARIE, N.Y. — A limousine loaded with revelers headed to a 30th birthday party blew a stop sign at the end of a highway and slammed into an SUV parked outside a store, killing all 18 people in the limo and two pedestrians in the deadliest U.S. transportation accident in almost a decade, officials and relatives of the victims said Sunday.
The collision turned a relaxed Saturday afternoon into chaos at an upstate New York spot popular with tourists taking in the fall foliage. Relatives said the limousine was carrying four sisters and their friends to a birthday celebration for the youngest.
“They did the responsible thing getting a limo so they wouldn’t have to drive anywhere,” their aunt, Barbara Douglas, told reporters on Sunday. She did not want to name them publicly but added: “They were wonderful girls. They’d do anything for you and they were very close to each other and they loved their family.”
The 2001 Ford Excursion limousine was traveling southwest on Route 30 in Schoharie, about 170 miles north of New York City, around 2 p.m. when it failed to stop at a T-junction with state Route 30A, State Police First Deputy Superintendent Christopher Fiore said at a news conference in Latham, New York.
It went across the road and hit an unoccupied SUV parked at the Apple Barrel Country Store, killing the limousine driver and 17 passengers, as well as two people outside the vehicle.
The crash “sounded like an explosion,” said Linda Riley, of nearby Schenectady, who was on a shopping trip with her sisters and had been in their parked car at the time at the store.
When she got out of her vehicle, she saw a body on the ground, she said. People started screaming.
Authorities said autopsies were being performed and didn’t release names of victims or speculate on what caused the limo to run the stop sign. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating.
Speaking through tears on the telephone, Valerie Abeling said her 34-year-old niece Erin Vertucci was among the victims, along with Vertucci’s newlywed husband, 30-yearold Shane Mcgowan. They were on their way to a friend’s birthday party, she said; her own daughter had been invited along but couldn’t go.
The couple was married at a “beautiful wedding” in June at a venue in upstate New York, Abeling said.
“This is one of the biggest losses of life that we’ve seen in a long, long time,” NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt told reporters.
It’s the deadliest transportation accident since February 2009, when Colgan Air Flight 3407 crashed in Buffalo, New York, killing 50 people, Sumwalt said.