Terrible X-mas Eve MVA/4 Fatalities in Bucks County

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From NYTimes and AP :

December 25, 2004

Girl, 12, Lives Through Crash, but Her Parents and Sister Die

By ROBERT D. McFADDEN  

Three members of a New Jersey family bound for Christmas in Virginia were killed on a highway north of Philadelphia early yesterday when a pickup truck speeding in the opposite lanes shot across a median and plowed head-on into their minivan, the police said. The driver of the pickup was also killed.

Pennsylvania state troopers said the collision occurred at 7:10 a.m. on Interstate 95 near the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Bristol Township, Bucks County. The pickup driver was ejected and the two vehicles were mangled, but the family's 12-year-old daughter survived with minor injuries.

The highway was strewn with battered Christmas presents in red, green and motley wrappings, and with torn bags of clothing that had been hurled from the minivan as rescue crews, firefighters and police officers from nearby communities struggled to untangle the wreckage and extricate the victims.

The front ends of both vehicles virtually disintegrated under the impact of the collision, and in the kaleidoscope of twisted metal it was even difficult to tell minivan from pickup. The southbound lanes were closed for nearly five hours as accident investigators tried to reconstruct what had happened. 

Trooper Rich Chiodo of the state police barracks in Trevose, Pa., listed the dead family members, residents of Sparta, N.J., as Anthony S. Stassi, 43, and his wife, Beverly J. Stassi, 43, who were killed instantly, and their daughter, Samantha, 10, who was pronounced dead at St. Mary's Medical Center in Langhorne, Pa. The pickup driver was identified as Ronald A. Matecki, 26, of Fairless Hills, Pa.

Trooper Chiodo said the surviving daughter, Stephanie Stassi, who had been in the left rear seat of the minivan next to her sister and, like her sister and parents, had been wearing a seat belt, was treated at Frankford-Torresdale Hospital in Philadelphia for minor injuries. The girl was later turned over to an aunt and uncle, and other relatives were on their way from Virginia, the authorities said.

The cause of the accident was still under investigation last night, and the state police asked witnesses or anyone with information to call the Trevose Barracks at 215-942-3900. Trooper Chiodo said that alcohol was not a suspected cause.

But Sgt. James P. Raykovitz told The Associated Press that speed might have been a factor in the accident, which he called "tragic at any time of the year, let alone the holiday season." One investigator said that it appeared that the pickup truck had been traveling at a high rate of speed. 

The Stassi family had left their home in Sussex County, 75 miles north of the crash scene, sometime before 6 a.m., bound for Alexandria, Va., to celebrate Christmas with the children's grandparents, the authorities said. With Mr. Stassi driving their 2003 Dodge Caravan, the family was southbound on I-95, traveling in the left lane, when the danger loomed, the police said. It was minutes before sunrise.

Mr. Matecki, only a few miles from his home in Fairless Hills, was alone in his 2003 Dodge Ram, northbound on the interstate near the Route 413 exit, when "for unknown reasons," as the police report put it, his pickup veered left off the highway.

It plunged down a shallow gully and crossed a 25-foot grassy median. As it did so, the police said, it sideswiped the end of a guard rail that protects the abutments of an overpass but provides no complete barrier between the northbound and southbound lanes. It then shot up into the southbound lanes, the investigators said, and slammed head-on into the minivan.