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Associated Press
January 24, 2003
By DIANE SCARPONI, Associated Press Writer
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. -- Lights along a stretch of Interstate 95 were out when an
SUV crashed into a jackknifed tractor-trailer, killing four Yale students,
investigators confirmed Friday.
Investigators also said early tests found that none of the drivers was
intoxicated and that the SUV was not traveling at a grossly excessive speed.
The road had been salted and sanded in the hours leading up to the accident.
The driver of the tractor-trailer told investigators it was dark and he thought
he hit a patch of black ice, then lost control of his rig. The Yale students
were traveling back from New York after an all-night fraternity pledge event. A
final report by the National Transportation Safety Board is expected to take a
year to complete.
In a preliminary report, the NTSB said the lights may have been out because a
contractor working on a nearby bridge on the opposite side of the highway from
the crash had hit a light pole a few hours before.
"All the witnesses and the drivers that we talked to in that area said it was
very dark and it was difficult to see. It was difficult to see the weather
conditions," said NTSB investigator David S. Rayburn.
The lights were knocked out to the southbound side at about 1 a.m. on Jan. 17
and were not repaired until 10:30 a.m. The crash happened on the northbound
side of the highway at about 5 a.m.
Lights were also out on the northbound side at the time of the accident, but
Rayburn said he did not yet know if the light pole accident was to blame, or if
something else happened to those lights.
An experiment using similar conditions found it was probably so dark that an
oncoming car could not have seen the tractor-trailer from 50 feet away. With
dim lights or bright lights, the truck could be seen, Rayburn said.
The tractor-trailer had crossed the median and the back end of it was sticking
into the northbound lane when the SUV hit it. The cab had detached, so the
lights on the flatbed trailer were out.
On the northbound side, about 46 lights on the main road and 16 lights on the
ramps were out.
The light outage was not reported to the state Department of Transportation at
the time, he said. Investigators were still looking into whether such a report
was required, and why the report was not done.
Also, state police cruisers and state snowplow drivers were operating in the
area in the hours before the crash. Police were investigating if these drivers
reported a problem with the lights, said State Police Sgt. Paul Vance.
Construction companies are required to have a DOT inspector on site, he said.
The construction company, M. DeMatteo/Brunalli, could not be reached for
comment. Telephone messages were left at the company's office.
The NTSB said it would continue to investigate whether the state had used
appropriate Jersey barriers on the road. The barriers are temporary while
larger barriers are being installed.
Original road designs envisioned two parallel sets of barriers along the
median, but that was changed to one because of a highway resurfacing job. The
NTSB is investigating whether the federal government had signed off of the new
design.
The truck driver, Armando Salgado, 33, had three years on the job and had
rested for seven hours before beginning his shift. He worked for Arrow Trucking
from Tulsa, Okla., and had been on the road about three hours when the crash
happened.
Rayburn said Arrow Trucking has a satisfactory safety record and that previous
media reports of safety problems were incorrect.
The driver of the SUV, Yale junior Sean Fenton, 20, had been up all night with
a fraternity pledge event in New York City along with the other students.
Fenton may have slept earlier in the day, he said.
Based on interviews with some of the survivors, Rayburn said most of the nine
students in the SUV were asleep at the time of the crash.
"Preliminary tests show there was no evidence of alcohol intoxication," Rayburn
said.
The students, most of whom were large Yale football players or baseball
players, were jammed in one car because another car that was supposed to take
them back from New York had broken down, he said.
"The vehicle is not designed to carry nine people," Rayburn said. He said
investigators would study whether the overloaded SUV was a factor in the
accident.
All of the students were members or pledges of DKE, the largest fraternity at
Yale. David Easlick, the fraternity's executive director in Washington, D.C.,
said as part of the pledge event, seven freshmen "captured" a senior DKE member
and took him to New York on Thursday.
A total of 16 upperclassmen then traveled to New York to try and find him,
Easlick told the New Haven Register.
"It's a basic hide-and-go-seek game," Easlick said. "Once they find him, they
have to give him a good time, somewhere. It's not a kidnapping."
The crash has prompted the national fraternity to review its pledge activities.
"We'll have the alumni group take a look at the whole initiation process and
make some changes," Easlick said.
Killed were Andrew Dwyer, 19, of Hobe Sound, Fla., Nicholas Grass, 19, of
Holyoke, Mass; Kyle Burnat, 19, of Atlanta; and Sean Fenton, 20, of Newport
Beach, Calif.
Fenton was the driver. Investigators would not say where the other students
were sitting.
Only Fenton and another passenger in the car were wearing seat belts, but
Rayburn said seat belts may not have helped the victims, since the SUV rammed
partially under the tractor-trailer, damaging the roof.
The five other students and Salgado were injured. Two students remain in the
hospital.
Lawyers for the Fenton and Grass families attended the NTSB briefing to gather
information.
"The family wants to know what happened and why," said Robert Adelman, a lawyer
for the Fenton family.
Joel Faxon, a lawyer for Grass' family, said he wanted to hear investigators
determine a probable cause for the accident before advising the family of its
options.
"There are issues with the state. There are issues with the driver of the
truck," Faxon said.
(c) 2003 The Associated Press.
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