Police in Bethesda, Maryland, were searching for the cause of a tragic car accident that killed two passengers on New Year’s Day.
A 20-year-old man and an 18-year-old pregnant teen died in the early morning accident. The driver, a 22-year-old man, was admitted to a Baltimore trauma center, and two other teens in the car sustained injuries not considered life-threatening.
The SUV carrying the five passengers drove off the road and over a sidewalk, coming to rest after running into a tree and a fence. The group reportedly had just left a party, but police could not say with certainty that the driver had consumed any alcohol. Investigators did find alcohol containers, some full and some empty, in the SUV. The driver could face charges once police conclude their investigation.
Friends who gathered along the road near the crash site mourned the victims and talked about their backgrounds. They described the dead man as a kind person beset by troubles. His mother died last year, and he apparently was homeless, his home declared uninhabitable by authorities. He worked part-time at a sports venue. The young woman had attended school in Washington, D.C., and was in her second trimester of pregnancy.
One friend said she wished the driver or the passengers, if they had been drinking, had not gotten in the car and instead called family or friends for a ride. The lecture a drunk driver would receive from parents is a small price to spare lives, she said.
But instead of receiving that lecture, two young adults are dead, and their families are left to try and make sense of what happened, along with having to pay for medical and funeral expenses. There are options for the families to recover monetary damages from the responsible parties.