Four Sisters on Way to Birthday Party Among 20 Killed in New York Crash

Four sisters on their way to a birthday party have been identified as among the 20 fatalities from a car crash in upstate New York that happened on Oct. 6.

The driver of a limousine carrying the four sisters and other revelers celebrating a 30th birthday barreled through an intersection, ignoring a stop sign, and slammed into an SUV parked outside a store, killing all 18 people inside the limo.

Two pedestrians were also killed in the brutal crash in Schoharie, the deadliest transportation accident in the United States in almost a decade.

Sisters Identified

The four sisters were celebrating the birthday of the youngest. Three of the women were with their husbands.

Barbara Douglas, their aunt, told reporters those three couples were Amy and Axel Steenburg, Abigail and Adam Jackson, and Mary and Rob Dyson; the fourth sister was named as Allison King.

“They did the responsible thing getting a limo so they wouldn’t have to drive anywhere,” Douglas said.

“One just got married, and that’s what this was—her new husband was giving her a surprise birthday party,” she said, reported the New York Post. They were beautiful girls, full of life. They had their whole lives ahead of them.”

Tom King, 35, told the Post that his sisters were very close.

“They were the Four Musketeers,’’ he said. “We all are what’s left. There was seven of us—five sisters and two brothers.”

All 18 people in the limo and two pedestrians were killed. AP

Barbara Douglas of Dannemora, N.Y., talks to reporters about her four family members that died in a fatal limousine crash killing 20 people on Route 30 and 30 A on Oct. 6, 2018, as seen Oct. 7, 2018, in Schoharie, N.Y. AP Photo/Hans Pennink

Others Identified

Eric Steenberg, brother to Axel Steenberg, who was married to one of the four sisters, said that another brother, Rich Steenberg, was also in the limo.

“It hasn’t really sunk in yet. It seems like a really bad dream, I guess,” Eric Steenberg told CBS.

“I don’t know how people move forward from it,” added Andrea Orokos, sister-in-law of Rich Steenberg. “There’s so many people involved. There’s so many that have been affected. Children involved that are going to grow up without their parents and without their father.”

Valerie Abeling, the aunt of victim Erin Vertucci, said her 34-year-old niece and her niece’s new husband, 30-year-old Shane McGowan, were among the 20 victims.

“She was a beautiful, sweet soul; he was, too, they were very sweet,” Abeling said. “They were two very young, beautiful people” who “had everything going for them.”

From NTD.tv