http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...AG7V9RNCU1.DTL
Note*
Wear your
F***ing seat belt and if you dont at least make your kids (or other passengers wear them.
Delfin Vigil, Tanya Schevitz, Chronicle Staff Writers
Monday, November 15, 2004
A speeding SUV packed with 10 children -- none wearing seat belts -- rolled over several times on Interstate 280 in San Francisco, killing three people and injuring eight when the driver swerved to take an off-ramp, according to the California Highway Patrol.
Cherie Williams-Joseph, 28, of San Francisco was driving a Chevrolet Suburban about 80 mph at 7:30 p.m. Saturday when she missed her exit at Ocean Avenue and swerved over a raised median divider that separates the highway from the off-ramp, according to the CHP.
Williams-Joseph lost control, and the SUV rolled over three or four times, ejecting several people. Williams-Joseph, her 16-year-old daughter, Joan Parker, and 4-year-old Reggie Bennett died at the scene, authorities said.
Eight children between the ages of 4 months and 14 years were injured, four of them severely. The group had been returning home from a family gathering, authorities said.
Authorities said Williams-Joseph was following her husband on southbound I-280 when the accident occurred.
"Apparently, they were following one another, driving at a high rate of speed," said Officer Shawn Chase. "The husband took the off-ramp. The wife missed it and veered off."
Authorities said they had received a report of a reckless driver on southbound I-280 just before the accident.
Chase said Williams-Joseph was related in some way to all 10 children in the SUV. No one in the vehicle was wearing a seat belt, and the three people who died were ejected.
The most critically injured child underwent surgery for head injuries Sunday at San Francisco General Hospital. Three other critically injured children were upgraded to stable condition Sunday. The other four children had minor to moderate injuries.
Williams-Joseph's husband looked back and saw the accident, authorities said.
It was one of three fatal vehicle accidents that took the lives of five people on Bay Area roads over the weekend. A sixth died in an apparent suicide.
Janet Pomeroy, a 51-year-old Rio Vista woman, was killed Saturday evening when the motorcycle she was a passenger on hit a dead dog, causing her to be thrown down an embankment of eastbound Highway 4 in Martinez, the CHP said.
About 5:20 p.m., the 52-year-old driver of a 2004 Harley Davidson lost control of the bike, struck the side of a motorcycle the couple was following, and veered off the highway and down the embankment, reported the CHP. The driver sustained minor injuries while the driver and passenger of the other motorcycle were uninjured.
About 30 minutes later, a pedestrian standing on Interstate 80 in Vallejo was struck and killed by a car, and the car's occupants were injured. Stephen Palevich, 61, of Oakland was driving a Honda sedan about 5:45 p.m. west on I- 80 at the Highway 37 over-crossing when he struck the unidentified man, according to the CHP.
Palevich told the CHP that he could not see the victim because the man's clothes were too dark. The Solano County coroner's office said the unidentified victim's fingerprints are being checked through an FBI database, because no identification could be found on him or at the scene of the accident.
Palevich and his passenger, Kathleen Palevich, were taken to Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Vallejo where they were treated for minor injuries.
On Sunday, eastbound Interstate 580 was closed in Castro Valley from 3:42 to 4:30 p.m. after a pedestrian apparently jumped to his death off of the Dublin Canyon overpass, according to the CHP. The victim was pronounced dead the scene.
E-mail the writers at
dvigil@sfchronicle.com and
tschevitz@sfchronicle.com.
3 die in rollover of SUV packed with 10 kids
and almost flip or hit the median (which is what this woman hit).
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