Reflections on those who died in I-81 crash
On March 28, six people died in a fiery pileup on Interstate 81 in Foster Township that involved 96 vehicles and occurred during a sudden snow squall.
The deceased tragically became part of what is likely the worst traffic event in Schuylkill County history. But they are more than statistics or a list of names. They included a married couple returning to New England from visiting family in Virginia; a couple from Carlisle likely on a job with the business they operated; a truck driver from Brooklyn, New York, whose son desperately tried to find him among the wreckage; and a Navy veteran from West Virginia.
Here are reflections on the victims from family and friends.
A Massachusetts couple remembered
Engineers Terri Stull and Douglas Teeter were returning from visiting Douglas’ 90-year-old mother in Virginia when they were killed.
The Lexington, Massachusetts, couple would have celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary in September.
The Rev. Barbara Lea Callaghan, senior minister of Hancock United Church of Christ, where the couple attended church, said she didn’t know when they left Virginia, but they were headed home when tragedy struck.
She said their death “left a huge hole for so many.”
Those who feel it most profoundly are their children, Caleb Teeter, 18, and Andrew Teeter, 23. Callaghan said the church is supporting them emotionally and in other ways. A fund, the Teeter-Stull Family Fund, c/o Enterprise Bank, 1666 Massachusetts Ave., Lexington, MA 02421, has been established.
Both Terri, 56, and Douglas, 57, graduated from the University of Michigan. Online memorials about them talk about their professional accomplishments in the engineering field and how they made a lasting impact on those who knew them.
A 90-minute celebration of life service was held April 7 at the church, where co-workers were among those to speak.
Nick Votaw, Stull’s boss, who worked with her for 20 years, said, “Terri always seemed to have an endless capacity to care for other people.” He said she loved God and family most of all.
When he did her employee reviews, Votaw wrote that Stull was “our conscience.”
“She always made the people around her better,” said Jessica Vines, another co-worker.
Ming Ji, who worked with Teeter, said he would “forever remember his patience, humility and kindness to everyone.”
Steve Richard said Teeter was an “excellent” engineer, had a thirst for knowledge and wanted the best for everyone.
The death of the couple should remind all that “life is fragile; cherish it,” he said.
‘They were angels’: Family grieves for Carlisle couple
Carlisle residents Edward Ramos and Rita Matos were a couple who had planned to marry later this year.
Ramos, 43, and Matos, 40, had known each other since their early teens and, after spending the middle part of their lives apart, they rekindled their relationship and spent the last several years of their life together, said Ramos’ mother, Emma Garcia. The couple, who had a son, Leonidas, 7, had recently become engaged.
“They were angels, in life and now,” said Emma Garcia, who lives in Port Carbon with her husband, Herman.
Ramos and Matos owned and operated R&R Trucking, a Carlisle-based trucking company that delivered packages for several agencies. On the day of the accident, Ramos and Matos were headed north on I-81 to make a delivery and were traveling in a company box truck, Emma Garcia said.
Eventually, they got caught in the blinding snow squall that caused the multi-vehicle collision near Minersville Exit 116. The box truck was one of several vehicles in their vicinity that caught fire.
“It happened all at once,” Emma Garcia said. “It was crazy.”
Emma Garcia doesn’t know where Ramos and Matos were headed, but said it was likely a city along the northern tier of the I-81 corridor, such as Hazleton.
She said that discovering the news of the couple’s deaths was a painful, laborious process.
“I’m heartbroken,” Emma Garcia said.
Three days after the accident, Ramos’ half-brother, Roberto Garcia, noticed Ramos had not been responding to his calls and messages. When the family tried to contact Matos, she, too, could not be reached. The family became worried and started making calls to local hospitals and police, asking if the couple had been involved in the pileup.
About two days later, police confirmed that Ramos and Matos were among the fatalities and that their box truck was among the vehicles in the blaze.
Emma Garcia was stunned to hear the news.
“It was horrible, the waiting,” Emma Garcia said. “That’s what hurts me the most, because he wasn’t even that far from us.”
Ramos, who was born in Reading in March 1979, was known to his friends and family as Chino. He met his future fiancee when they were teenagers in Reading, and the two dated briefly before she and her family moved to Mechanicsburg.
“They kind of went their separate ways,” Emma Garcia said.
Life went on, and the two eventually had children with other partners. About eight years ago, when they were both single, they reconnected online and started dating again, Emma Garcia said.
Ramos had another son, Nathaniel Rodriguez, 24, from a previous relationship, while Matos had two other sons — Serafin Garcia, 23, and Cadillac Garcia, 17.
Ramos and Matos moved to Carlisle in 2016, where they started the trucking company and spent the rest of their lives together. Matos also worked as a caregiver and an accountant.
Following his mother’s death, Serafin Garcia set up a GoFundMe page to ease the financial burden for himself and his younger brothers, who live in the Carlisle home that was owned by their parents.
W. Va. man remembered as a family man
Douglas Williams, 69, of Pine Grove, West Virginia, is being remembered for his devotion to family.
According to his obituary, Williams was born and went to school in Baltimore, and served in the Navy in the early 1970s.
After leaving the Navy, he moved to Massachusetts, where he met his wife, Debbie Ellis Williams. They had two daughters, Jennifer Stalnaker and Kimberly Campbell.
Williams, who was driving a car the day of the crash, had eight grandchildren and one great-grandson, whom the obituary describes as “one of the greatest joys of his life.”
The obituary states his wife and daughters were “the high water mark” in his life and that his wife of 47 years was his best friend.
“He will always love and watch over his wife and daughters,” the obituary reads.
Amanda Fluharty, a waitress at Valley Diner in Pine Grove, said while she knew of Williams, he and his wife mostly stayed to themselves.
“I never saw him at the diner, but I would see his large truck from time to time,” she said.
Fluharty said the couple lived outside the small town in northwestern West Virginia, less than 25 miles from the Pennsylvania border, for 10 or 15 years. One of his daughters lived nearby.
According to the obituary, in addition to his wife and daughters, Williams is survived by four of his six siblings, Peggy Allio, Ethel Parker, Elwood Jordan and Kathy Lutz. He was preceded in death by his parents, Elwood and Ethel Jordan, and siblings, Ronald Williams and Patricia Haldorson.
Jordan remembered his late brother in an online memorial as his best friend.
“We have so many memories together and would always laugh so hard together,” he wrote. “He would visit us when he was on the road and I will always cherish those memories! When I say he will be missed, that is an understatement! The guy was loved more than he will ever know!”
‘That’s my father in there’
The inferno that consumed several vehicles had been extinguished when authorities noticed a man standing near a burnt-out tractor-trailer.
A state trooper and a first responder approached the man, who was calmly peering into the twisted wreckage.
Girardville Fire Chief Frank Zangari witnessed the trooper inform the man he was not authorized to be in a restricted area.
“The man turned,” Zangari recalled, and said, “That’s my father in there.”
On Thursday, state police identified the deceased man in the tractor-trailer as Domingo Diaz, 66, of Brooklyn, New York.
It is likely that the man at the scene was the victim’s son, Mercy Diaz, who had told a reporter earlier in the day that he was searching for his father, whom he believed was involved in the accident.
The father and son were in separate tractor-trailers northbound on the interstate when the squall struck without warning, reducing visibility to zero. The father entered the squall before the son, who managed to avoid the crash.
“We were on the phone,” Mercy recalled at a processing center in Minersville’s Good Will Fire Company several hours after the accident, “and the phone went blank.”
At the processing center, Mercy frantically attempted to contact his father.
He repeatedly called hospitals in Pottsville, Danville and Hershey to determine if his father was among some 24 injured taken from the scene by ambulance.
His search was in vain, and he apparently made it to the accident scene.
Details of the son’s quest remain unclear. Efforts to reach him or other members of Domingo Diaz’s family were unsuccessful.