Houston Chronicle
AUGUST 16, 1988
Edition: 4 STAR
Section: A
Page: 21
Topics:
Index Terms:
Traffic Deaths Houston Texas
9 killed in 4 area accidents
StaffBy Staff
Article Text:
Four area accidents Monday killed nine people, including a mother and two children whose pickup was hit by a freight train and
three Louisiana residents whose car was struck by a runaway trailer.Wanda Griffin, 27, a Sour Lake homemaker, was pinned in her pickup after it failed to stop at a railroad crossing outside Beaumont about 9:30 a.m. and was crushed by a six-engine, 27-car Southern Pacific freight train.
Griffin died in Beaumont's Baptist Hospital at 1 p.m.
Her daughter, Panda, 11, and her niece,Melissa Brown, 12, of Kountze were dead atthe scene. Each had been thrown from the truck and dragged beneath the train forseveral hundred yards.
The train, which had been traveling about 50 mph, pushed the pickup six-tenths of a mile from the Meeker Road crossing near U.S. 90, Department of Public Safety Trooper Tim Thompson said.
``There's no cross bar or warning light at that intersection, but there is a stop sign,'' he said, ``The pickup driver rolled through the stop sign - probably planning to stop when she hit U.S. 90, like a lot of other drivers do. But she didn't notice the train had already rolled into the hazard zone.''
The hazard zone is any section of railroad track within 1,500 feet of an intersection, Thompson said.
A flat utility trailer came loose from a pickup and hit a Cadillac head-on, killing three members of a Lake Charles, La., family. The accident occurred about 3:30 p.m. on U.S. 90 about one-half mile east of the Raywood community in Liberty County.Dead were the car's driver, Aileen S. Dyer, 43; her son, Sean, 18; and her mother-in-law, Hazel H. Dyer, no age available.
State police said the pickup was westbound toward Houston when its trailer, full of composition shingles, came loose, and rolled across the center stripe.
Aileen Dyer swerved to the right, but the trailer hit her oncoming car on the road's shoulder, slicing off its top. Aileen Dyer was decapitated. Her passengers died of head injuries.
The truck driver, Richard Allen Cole, 33, of Houston, employed by Spar Industries of Houston, was traveling from Beaumont.
A man and a woman were killed shortly after 5 p.m. when their pickup was struck broadside in northwest Houston by a car that police said ran a stop sign.
Officer D.D. Humphrey said the pickup was northbound on Brinkman when it collided with the car traveling west on Lehman.
The truck flipped over and landed in a ditch. Several dogs riding in the back of the truck were thrown out but not injured.
The male victim, killed instantly, was Donald Ross Wheeler, 37, address undetermined. The female victim, whose identity was withheld pending notification of kin, died shortly later in Ben Taub Hospital.
Two others in the pickup and the driver of the car suffered minor injuries.
Humphrey said there were no skid marks in the intersection, and the accident remains under investigation.
A pileup on the Rainbow bridge on Texas 87 about 4:30 p.m., which blocked traffic for nearly two hours between Port Arthur and Bridge City, killed one person and injured five others, none seriously.
State police said an 18-wheel northbound truck driven by Arthur Rule, 44, of Orange lost its brakes, went out of control and struck an auto, causing a chain reaction accident involving six other cars.
Killed was Mary Elizabeth Conner, 75, of Kirbyville.
Caption:
Photo: An overturned pickup and a car that collided
Paul S. Howell/Chronicle
Copyright 1988 Houston Chronicle
Record Number: 08*16*563353
