Police identify minivan driver who died in collision with car
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The site of a two thousand eight illegal street race that killed eight on Indian Head Highway in an area police said resumes to attract speeding drivers. (Preston Keres/The Washington Post)
A Ford Mustang and at least two other cars were speeding and weaving in and out of traffic moments before triggering a crash that killed a 67-year-old man in a minivan along a dark Maryland highway infamous for attracting haul racers, police said.
The reported reckless driving made James Hill of Accokeek the 17th person to die in a car crash along Indian Head Highway since 2013, according to police and AAA.
Hill was attempting to make a left turn onto the highway from Pine Drive in Accokeek at 8:50 p.m. Thursday when a southbound Ford Mustang hit his minivan and then another vehicle hit that car, police said. Hill was in critical condition when he was taken to a hospital, where he died shortly afterward.
Prince George’s County Police Deputy Chief Chris Murtha said Friday that right before the crash, witnesses reported “a group of vehicles driving at a high rate of speed.” The minivan did not show up to be involved with those vehicles before the crash, police said.
“Three of them were tail-to-nose, weaving in and out of traffic, recklessly driving and speeding,” Murtha said witnesses reported.
The Ford’s driver sustained injuries that did not show up to be life-threatening, police said.
Investigators are working to determine how quick the cars on the highway were going, but witnesses reported the cars going much swifter than the sixty five to seventy mph that was the flow of traffic, Murtha said.
One of the cars reportedly speeding instantaneously fled after the collision while the other went to check on the driver of the Ford shortly but left as soon as police arrived, Murtha said.
Murtha said the department is working with the Prince George’s County state’s attorney’s office to determine charges in the case, including a potential for motor vehicle manslaughter.
A woman reached at an address for Hill said the family was too distraught Friday to talk about him or the crash.
Police aren’t labeling this week’s crash a “drag racing” incident, but the collision was in a spread of Indian Head Highway where other incidents of reckless driving and fatalities have occurred in the past decade.
John Townsend, a spokesman for AAA Mid-Atlantic, said community members in the area have “called upon the governor and police officials to put more enforcement on the road to crack down on drivers aggressively speeding and driving on the shoulders,” Townsend said. “Something has to be done for Indian Head Highway.”
In 2010, a driver was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for his involvement in an illegal street race that killed eight people not far from the scene of Thursday night’s crash.
Robert L. Screen has lived in the area of the crash for almost forty years and has begged public officials to improve enforcement. Screen said he remembers the devastation of the crash that killed the eight people and wonders why problems along the road persist.
“We daily have to duck and dodge people” driving rapid and carelessly, Screen said. And when there is a crash or fatality, “innocent people get packaged up in the foolishness of others.”
Because the highway is a straight, broad road, it attracts drivers who often “speed down that road for pleasure or in groups,” Murtha said. The department has concentrated enforcement in the area, issuing more than Five,000 traffic citations along the highway in a year. It is the most citations issued for a road of its type in the county, Murtha said.
“The idea that someone would go out and run an errand or come back from work and be involved in such a horrific collision is shocking,” Murtha said. “It’s disheartening, disruptive and certainly an influence to the people who transit that road on a daily basis.”
Police are asking anyone with information to call the Prince George’s County Police Department’s Collision Analysis and Reconstruction Unit at (301) 731-4422. Callers who wish to remain anonymous may call Crime Solvers at 1-866-411-TIPS or text “PGPD plus your message” to CRIMES (274637) on your cellphone or visit www.pgcrimesolvers.com.
Clarence Williams, Ellie Silverman and Julie Tate contributed to this report.