A private memorial service is being planned aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln for the four crew members who perished Saturday evening in a traffic accident, a Navy spokesman said.
The ceremony will be for the crew of the Everett-based warship, and the public will not be invited, ship spokesman Lt. Cmdr. John Filostrat said Tuesday. Counseling will be provided for crew members who seek it, he added.
The sailors, all second-class petty officers who worked on electronic or electric systems, were killed when the BMW M3 convertible in which they were riding sheared off a utility pole and overturned on Rainier Avenue S. in Seattle.
“Our thoughts and prayers go out to the sailors’ families,” commanding officer Capt. Andy McCawley said in a statement. “This is a great loss to the Navy and to the crew of Abraham Lincoln.”
The sailors are: Brian Adam Lane, 26, of Shawnee, Okla.; Clinton Dale Campbell, 24, of Milwaukee, Wis.; Anthony Stephen Cox, 22, of Mena, Ark.; and Carlos Ivan Garcia-Son, 22, of Chesterfield, Mo.
The Lincoln was the first Navy tour of duty for all of them, Filostrat said.
The Lincoln is at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, undergoing maintenance after its return from deployment in August.
Seattle police detectives are investigating, and have not yet determined who was driving when the high-speed accident occurred about 8:45 p.m. Saturday in the 5700 block of the south Seattle street, police spokesman Rich Pruitt said.
Tests will be conducted to determine whether alcohol or drugs were involved, but the results of those tests may never be made public under federal medical records laws designed to give people privacy, Pruitt said.
Toxicology tests will be released to relatives of the dead men, Pruitt said. Because all the men died and there will be no criminal prosecution, only family members will be able to make the results public, he said.
The four died when the BMW in which they were riding left the road and collided with the pole.
Police said it was “fortunate” no other vehicles were directly involved in the accident. Witnesses told police the BMW had been traveling above the speed limit, passing other cars in a center turn lane and the oncoming lane prior to the accident, according to the police report.
The convertible overturned and came to rest in the oncoming lane. Three of the sailors were ejected, police said.
Reporter Jim Haley: 425-339-3447 or haley@heraldnet.com.
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