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04/28/2006 Authorities investigated a serious two-vehicle crash Thursday afternoon near Tom's Market on South Airport Road just west of Garfield Avenue. A witness reported that a passenger car struck a supply truck. 3 teens killed in accidentCar was apparently speeding
Three teens were killed when their car, pictured, struck a supply truck on South Airport road near Garfield yesterday afternoon. TRAVERSE CITY — The scene unfolded so quickly: revving engines, a silver blur of a car losing control on busy South Airport Road, a big truck unable to avoid a collision. Then, a sound like an explosion, and three local teens dead, two others hurt. And a witness just a few steps away. "There was gasoline and blood all over the place," said a woman who dashed to the crash site from her vantage point near Pet Supplies Plus, a shop across South Airport from Tom's Food Market. "I have seen a lot of really bad things in my life. This is really bad. This is really bad." Five teens were wedged in the car, four boys and a girl, on a ride shortly after school let out Thursday afternoon. Moments earlier, nearby cars moving too fast annoyed the witness, who works nearby and did not want to be publicly identified. "I could hear engines revving up and I looked and saw the silver car and he was going in and out of the left lane, like chasing this other car," she said. "The silver car stepped on it and as he went into the left lane and went sideways and the truck just crashed right into him. "He was going pretty fast. The truck tried to avoid them, but they were going too fast," she said. The car slammed into the truck, she said, then spun, its front end crushed and windshield shattered. Grand Traverse County Sheriff Scott Fewins said three of the teens, all of whom were local residents and students, were pronounced dead at the scene. Fewins said it appeared a 1995 Mazda driven by one of the teens veered left of center and hit a commercial truck owned by Ferguson Traverse Supply Company of Traverse City. "To have multiple fatalities and to be dealing with teenage kids, it has all the elements to make it just as bad as they can get," he said. Fewins said investigators made initial identifications of the five teens based on documents they carried, but officials would not disclose their identities Thursday. Some of the victims are relatives of Record-Eagle employees. Michelle Mulliner, production director for the Record-Eagle, said she believed two employees at the newspaper's print facility on Garfield Road each had a child involved in the crash. A third teen involved in the crash is the child of a former worker at the Garfield facility, Mulliner said. Fewins said he believed some family members appeared at the accident scene — witnesses said one distraught woman wailed for her child — but he couldn't say how many. "They for some reason believed their family members were involved in the car accident, but we urged them to go to the hospital," he said. A teenage girl and another survivor were transported to Munson Medical Center for treatment. "I have been told that it appears they may survive," Fewins said just before 7 p.m. as deputies cleared the accident scene. "The girl for sure, the boy, maybe," he said. Fewins said it will take time to determine accident speeds and other information. "This was serious enough that it will take days and weeks to put it together," he said. "There were witnesses that may have been able to pinpoint it, but we are all fragmented until we have a debriefing and get all the information together." South Airport Road was the scene of another fatal crash in August 2004 that took two other teenage lives — Adrian Morris, 17, and Christan DeWitt, 16. The Traverse City West Senior High School girls were returning to band practice when Adrian pulled out onto South Airport from Grand Traverse Crossing and was struck broadside by Timothy Schubert of Kalkaska. Also injured in the crash was Ivy Worm, then 14, and a passenger in Adrian's Geo Prizm. Schubert was later convicted by a jury of two counts of negligent homicide for his role in the crash.
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