By Ashley B. Craig
Charlston Daily Mail
PITTSBURGH — Two children traveling home to Pennsylvania after a family trip to South Carolina were killed after being ejected from the minivan they were riding in when it rolled several times near Clendenin.
Haley Weiland, 6, and Logan Beckwith, 7, both of Prospect, Pa., which is just north of Pittsburgh, were pronounced dead at the scene of the crash Tuesday morning.
The children’s mother, Carla Aiken, 36, had been driving the gold 2001 Mazda MPV heading north on Interstate 79 Tuesday morning with her three children, boyfriend and grandmother inside. The family was making the 11-hour trip back home from Myrtle Beach, S.C., and had been on the road for several hours, said Lt. Sean Crosier of the Kanawha Sheriff’s Department.
Aiken lost control of the minivan about 10 a.m. and veered off the roadway near Clendenin. She tried to correct the minivan but the vehicle went down into a deep median and rolled side over side several times. Deputies said some witnesses at the scene said the minivan rolled as many as 10 times while others say it rolled three times.
“At this point we don’t think she fell asleep, but we don’t know for sure,” Crosier said. “She was tired. They had been driving for a few hours and she could have just gotten distracted by something.”
The two children, Haley and Logan, were ejected from the rolling minivan. The lieutenant said the two were not wearing seatbelts and were not in safety seats. State and federal child safety laws require children under 8 years old to be in booster seats unless they are more than 4 feet 9 inches tall. Crosier could not say how tall the children were.
The lieutenant said he did not know where Haley and Logan were sitting in the vehicle, which has three rows of seating, but that if they weren’t wearing seatbelts their placement in the vehicle would not have made much difference.
“When the vehicle is rolling like that, the force is going everywhere,” he said. “There are no steadfast rules on who is going where, but the chances of ejection are greater when the occupants are not wearing seatbelts.”
Emergency crews transported Aiken and three other passengers, including Beckwith, 10, Helen Hillard, 74, and Christopher Gardner, 27, to Charleston Area Medical Center’s General Hospital for treatment.
Ethan Beckwith was wearing a seatbelt at the time of the crash and sustained only minor injuries. Hillard, Aiken’s grandmother and the children’s great-grandmother, sustained serious injuries and was in critical condition Tuesday afternoon. Aiken and her boyfriend, Gardner, also sustained serious injuries and were listed as being under evaluation. Deputies could not say whether Aiken, Hillard or Gardner were wearing seatbelts.
Crosier said it didn’t appear that drugs or alcohol were involved in the crash. The sheriff’s department’s Accident Reconstruction Unit is investigating the crash and is working to determine what caused Aiken to leave the roadway.
The northbound and southbound lanes of the Interstate were closed for a short time while emergency crews worked at the scene.
Copyright 2010 Charleston Newspapers