HYATTSVILLE, Md. — A church van carrying adults and children through a suburb of the nation’s capital collided with a pickup truck that crossed into its path, and the pickup truck burst into flames in an accident that killed four people and left 14 others badly injured, authorities said.
One child was killed, and several other children were being treated at hospitals.
The crash occurred Sunday on a busy, four-lane road with a double-yellow line and no dividing barriers in the Maryland community of Hyattsville just northeast of Washington. Charred debris was strewn on the sidewalk, along the curb and in the small front yard of a house near the crash site. A man who answered the door at the home declined to comment Monday.
Five children were being treated at Children’s National Medical Center. Spokeswoman Emily Hartman said Monday that three were in fair condition and two were in critical condition. Eight adults were taken to MedStar Washington Hospital Center, but a spokeswoman said their conditions were not available.
Two of the injured children are students at county elementary schools, said county public schools spokeswoman Sherrie Johnson.
The van belongs to Iglesia Ministerio de Dios Unido in Riverdale, said Scott Peterson, a spokesman for County Executive Rushern Baker. The “very young” church has a small congregation, and most members are Latino, he said.
“Something like this, that magnitude, has not happened in the county in years,” Baker said.
Witnesses say people ran with fire extinguishers from their homes but could do little to put out tall flames that rose above the pickup truck before firefighters arrived. Authorities said the fire was kept to the pickup truck, whose driver died along with two adults and a child in the van.
Fire department spokesman Mark Brady in Maryland’s Prince George’s County said firefighters were among those debriefed by counselors afterward because of the magnitude of the crash — “so many people, so many injuries and fatalities.”
Donald Huff, who lives on the Hyattsville street where the accident took place, said the tranquility of a Sunday afternoon was shattered around 5 p.m. that day. He said he heard “a loud boom, just like a bomb,” and then saw the flames.
“The fire just got bigger and bigger,” he told The Associated Press by phone.
He said a couple of people ran out on the street with kitchen fire extinguishers “to try to get as close as they could, but it was a little too much.”
Brady said police are still only in the early phases of investigating. But he said authorities initially believe the pickup truck rear-ended a passenger vehicle before going several hundred feet farther up a road, losing control and then crossing a double yellow center line into the path of the van. Once the pickup truck had crossed over the line, he said, the van struck the pickup on the right side and the pickup subsequently caught fire.
A witness also told WTTG-TV that she heard the crash from her home, and when she ran out, she saw “just regular people running in and pulling people out of the van.” She said she saw bystanders remove at least four children from the van.
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