A fiery wreck involving a church van and two other vehicles killed four people in Maryland over the weekend, authorities said.
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Prince George’s Co. Fire Chief Marc Bashoor described the crash as “horrific” in a tweet.
Officials told WUSA-TV that one child and three adults were among the victims. Of the 14 injured folks, officers stated eight are adults and 6 are kids. Four of the adults and four of the children were in critical condition, he said.
Among the hospitals treating the injured were Children’s National Medical Center and MedStar Washington Hospital, both in the District of Columbia.
The accident occurred on a highway in Hyattsville, a neighborhood simply northeast of Washington, D.C., about 5 p.m. Sunday. The driver of a pickup truck that veered across the center line into the path of the van was also killed, police said.
The incident began when one auto crashed and caught on fire.
A pickup truck ran into a church van at a road in Hyattsville, Md., near the nation’s capital late Sunday afternoon, killing four people and injuring 14 before the truck became engulfed in flames. He said firefighters were among those debriefed by counselors afterward because of the magnitude of the crash – “so many people, so many injuries and fatalities”.
Police say a preliminary investigation determined the pickup truck first hit the auto and then fled.
Brady said the adults in the van were mostly in their 20s and 30s and that the children ranged from 4 to 10 years old. He added late Sunday that authorities weren’t but releasing the names or the id of the church group and drivers concerned whereas family have been being notified.
A police spokeswoman did not immediately return a call seeking comment Sunday evening.
“The fire just got bigger and bigger”, he told The Associated Press by phone.
He mentioned a few folks ran out on the road with kitchen hearth extinguishers “to attempt to get as shut as they may, however it was somewhat an excessive amount of”.
He said that when the fire department arrived and brought the blaze under control, he could see them pulling bodies from the van.
Photos taken by people nearby appeared to show flames shooting into the air. A pickup truck and a large passenger van that collided came to rest in front of a two-story brick house with three cars parked in front.
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Santos says through a Spanish language translator that he rushed to the hospital after getting word of the crash and he spent most of Sunday night and all of Monday visiting with the injured members of his congregation.
