Two teens are now dead after a driver’s education car pulled in front of a tractor-trailer at a rural Upstate New York intersection.
On Tuesday, July 14, the Freightliner truck hit the car’s rear driver’s-side door broadside at the intersection of County Route 1A and Union Corners Road in Warwick, NY — a notorious location for car crashes.
According to WPIX 11, the truck appears to have had the right of way at the intersection. Police said the car had a stop sign and a flashing red light at the intersection, while the truck, which wasn’t pulling a trailer, had a flashing caution light.
The crash killed Antonio Baglivo and Paul Vandoran, both 16, who had been sitting in the back seat of the 2007 Chevrolet Malibu. One of the teens died at the scene of the crash, while the other was pronounced dead at the hospital, the Goshen Central School District announced.
On Wednesday, Goshen School District Superintendent Daniel Connor announced that a third passenger, Lucas O’Connor, 16, had died of his injuries. Connor said he had received word of O’Connor’s death shortly before a planned vigil that evening.
However, the next day, Connor said his report about O’Connor was unconfirmed, and that he may have been given incorrect information about the boy’s status.
All four student drivers attended Goshen High School. Classmates and teachers have had access to grief counselors since Wednesday.
Across the U.S., road crashes result in the deaths of more than 37,000 people each year, and are the leading cause of death for teens and young adults between 15 and 20 years of age. However, it’s relatively rare for car crashes involving driver’s education cars to prove fatal, given the presence of an adult driving instructor in the car.
The driver, 16-year-old Claudia Krebs, and the group’s 61-year-old driving instructor were injured in the crash, but survived. The driver of the tractor-trailer was also taken to the hospital in stable condition.
Currently, the cause of the crash remains under investigation.