Mother, 21, her one-year-old daughter and her girlfriend, 19, are killed by semi driver who ‘looked away from road to set down a coffee mug’ and crashed tractor trailer into their car
- Matthew Lewis Small, 34, was charged with three counts of reckless homicide
- Small was driving a semi-tractor trailer northbound on Interstate 65 outside Zionsville, Indiana on Sunday morning when the accident happened
- Mariah Tomey, 21, and Kaylee Kirk, 19, died along with Hadley Tomey, 1, when their car was pinned against a guardrail and caught fire
- He told police he’d looked down to put away his coffee mug when he ran into slowing down traffic
- The incident involved eight cars, one of which flipped over the guardrail
Truck driver Matthew Lewis Small, 34, has been charged with reckless homicide after police said his distracted driving led to the death of two women and a one-year-old baby
A mother, her one-year-old daughter and her girlfriend were killed when their car caught fire after a semi-tractor trailer driver crashed into slowing traffic as he looked away from the road to put a down a coffee mug.
Mariah Tomey, 21, Hadley Tomey, one, and Kaylee Kirk, 19, all of Lebanon, Indiana died after the semi crashed into their car on Interstate 65 on Sunday. The tractor trailer pinned the car to a guardrail before it caught fire.
Tomey and Kirk were declared dead at the scene, but Hadley’s body was only later discovered in the burnt out car.
Matthew Lewis Small, 34, of Grandville, Michigan, has been charged with three counts of reckless homicide – a level five felony – in relation to the incident which occurred on Sunday at about 11.05am near the exit to Zionsville, Indiana.
Police identified (L to R) Kaylee Kirk, 19, Hadley Tomey, one, and Mariah Tomey, 21, as the three people who died in the crash Sunday morning
Police said Small told them he had looked down while trying to put his coffee mug away when he ran into traffic that had slowed down. Eight cars in total were involved in the crash (shown)
Police said in a statement on the Boone County Indiana Sheriff’s Office’s Facebook page that they received multiple 911 calls about a major crash on the northbound side of they highway Sunday morning.
First responders discovered the crash involved eight cars and a semi-tractor trailer, which Small had been driving.
The other cars were seriously damaged in the crash, and authorities said 14 people were taken to the hospital with what appeared to be non-life threatening injuries.
Police said Kaylee (left) and Mariah (right, holding Hadley) were declared dead at the scene after their car caught on fire while being pinned to the guardrail by the semi-truck
Authorities said that they later discovered that Hadley had been in the car and had died, too
Small has been charged with three counts of reckless homicide over the deaths of Kaylee (left), Hadley (center) and Mariah (right)
Police said that Small told them that the accident happened when he was driving northbound and ‘looked down to set his coffee mug down, when he ran into slowing traffic’.
Police said that it appeared that Small had hit all of the eight cars as he ‘plowed through the back-up’.
Boone County Sheriff Mike Nielsen said in a statement that it was a ‘sad day for two Boone County families’.
‘Distracted driving or driver inattention is a major cause of many accidents on our public roadways,’ he said. ‘In this case we believe it was a contributing factor in this fatal crash.
He added that the Sheriff’s Office ‘feels strongly that those that cause death on our public roadways, because of driver inattention, should be held accountable’.
Small was booked into the Boone County Jail. He is being held without bond, according to online jail records.