For residents in New Jersey, the three-day Memorial Day weekend is supposed to be a time to honor and remember the lives of those who died while serving in the nation’s military. Unfortunately for some people, it ends up becoming a marker of other tragedies and losses. This is likely to be the case for a family in New Jersey who lost three of its members in a single accident over this weekend this year.
Nine relatives were travelling together from New Jersey to Niagara Falls for the holiday weekend according to NJ.com. In their vehicle were four adults and five children between the ages of four and 14. When in an intersection along a stretch of Route 20A about 30 miles from Buffalo, the were abruptly hit by a drunk driver who failed to stop at the stop sign when coming from the other direction.
The impact resulted in two women being thrown from the vehicle even though they were wearing seatbelts at the time. The women were an adult daughter and her mother. Both were pronounced dead at the scene of the accident. One of the children in the vehicle was the four-year-old little girl of the mother and grandmother who died at the scene. That little girl was taken to a hospital but died as well.
The remaining children were all injured and required hospitalization. They include two other four-year-olds, a 10-year-old and a 14-year-old. The other two adults also required transport to the hospital. The drunk driver was 20 years old and now faces multiple criminal charges.