Police: Driver veered into a work zone, killing 6
BALTIMORE >> New details are emerging about a midweek crash along the Baltimore beltway that left six construction workers dead after a driver lost control of her car and it careened into a work zone, according to Maryland State Police.
Lisa Adrienna Lea, 54, was alone in an Acura sedan driving north on Interstate 695 when she went to change lanes and struck the front passenger side of a Volkswagen early Wednesday afternoon, state police said.
The impact caused her to lose control, and her car entered the work zone through an opening in temporary concrete barriers separating the construction area from interstate traffic. The crew was actively working on the highway’s left shoulder.
After the crash, Lea was taken to the University of
Maryland Medical Center’s Shock Trauma Center for injuries she received. She remained hospitalized Thursday afternoon, police said.
The stretch of highway was closed for hours Wednesday in both directions, snarling traffic along the west side of the beltway, which circles Baltimore.
Police said the findings of their investigation will be turned over to the Baltimore County State’s Attorney to determine whether anyone will face criminal charges.
The driver of the Volkswagen didn’t report any injuries. He stopped his vehicle north of the scene, according to police.
Police issued a statement Thursday naming the six workers killed: Rolando Ruiz, 46, of Laurel; Carlos Orlando Villatoro Escobar, 43, of Frederick; Jose Armando Escobar, 52, of Frederick; Mahlon Simmons III, 31, of Union Bridge; Mahlon Simmons
II, 52, of Union Bridge; and Sybil Lee Dimaggio, 46, of Glen Burnie.
The National Transportation Safety Board, a federal agency that investigates transportation accidents, sent investigators to the scene Thursday. Their investigation will focus on “issues relating to speeding, work zone protection for construction workers, and collision avoidance technology,” an NTSB news release said Thursday afternoon.
Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski called the crash horrific.
“We offer our sincere condolences to the families, friends, and loved ones of those who have lost their lives in today’s tragic crash,” he wrote in a tweet Wednesday afternoon.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore also tweeted condolences, saying his “heart goes out to the victims and the families affected by the tragic crash on the 695 beltway this afternoon.”
A 17-year-old student was found dead in the Colorado woods after being accused of shooting and wounding two administrators at his Denver high school where students and parents were already fed up over recent violence and a lack of action by officials, authorities said Thursday.
The shooting occurred Wednesday morning at East High School, not far from downtown, while two administrators searched Austin Lyle for weapons, a daily requirement because of the boy’s behavioral issues, authorities said.
Lyle fled after the shooting and his body was found Wednesday night near his car in a remote, mountain area about 50 miles southwest of Denver, outside the small town of Bailey, in Park County. The county coroner’s office confirmed early Thursday that the body was Lyle’s. Cause of death was not released, pending an autopsy.
The shooting, at a time of rising gun violence on school campuses across the U.S., has stoked a backlash against a policy adopted in Denver several years ago of not putting police or armed personnel into schools.
The administrators who were shot were unarmed, said Denver schools spokesperson Scott Pribble.
“It stuns me that we have civilian people... charged with having to search a student or anyone for weapons,” said Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers. He said patting down students — especially for weapons — should fall to trained, armed school resource officers fitted with body armor.
If a resource officer had done the search at East High School, he added, “for the most part, I don’t see it being a tragedy.”
The city’s Board of Education convened a special meeting at 10 a.m. Thursday to discuss the shooting and school security. The meeting came after parents who converged on the 2,500-student East High campus Wednesday voiced frustration that officials were not adequately protecting their children.
The shooting occurred at a school shaken by frequent lockdowns and violence, including the recent killing outside the school of a classmate that prompted East High School students to march on the Colorado Capitol earlier this month.
“I am sick of it,” said Jesse Haase, who planned to talk with her daughter about taking her out of classes for the rest of the school year.
Some parents questioned why the district became one of many in the U.S. that decided to phase out school resource officers in the summer of 2020 amid a summer of protests over racial injustice following the killing of George Floyd by police.
Amid the flurry of criticism over lax security, Denver
school officials said Wednesday that they would once again put armed officers into the city’s public high schools.
There were no school resource officers on campus at the time of Wednesday’s shooting, Denver Police Chief Ron Thomas said.
Shootings in the nation’s schools more than tripled during a five-year period ending in 2021 compared to the previous five years, jumping from an average of 38 annually to more than 130 annually, according to a database from the Naval Postgraduate School. Since 2000, there have been more than 1,300 school shootings and related incidents that killed 377 people and wounded 1,025, according to the database.
The Colorado shooting was at least the second to occur at or near a school this week in the U.S. On Monday, a 15-year-old was arrested in the fatal shooting of a student outside of a Dallas-area high school.
Wednesday’s shooting happened just before 10 a.m. in an office area as Lyle was undergoing a search as part of a “safety plan” that required him to be patted down daily, officials said.