Four Are Dead After Head-On Collision

Four people, including a couple on their way to deposit their church's Sunday collection, were killed yesterday in a head-on collision on Virginia's Eastern Shore.

"It was terrible," said Bill Maddox of Hallwood, Va., an in-law of the couple, Fred and Betty Harris of Hallwood. "They were both wonderful people."

The collision's death toll appeared to be the highest for any highway crash in the Washington region during the 2006 holidays.

Sgt. D.S. Carr, a Virginia State Police spokesman, said Lori Marie Johnson, 29, of Sanford was driving a 1995 van north on Route 779 when the vehicle veered off the right side of the road. It then overcorrected and swerved into southbound lanes, striking the Harrises' 1995 station wagon, he said.

Johnson's 4-year-old daughter, Samantha Thorton, and Preston M. Bradford, who were passengers in the van, died on the scene, Carr said.

Johnson and another young daughter who was in the van were flown to hospitals in critical condition.

Betty Harris, 64, who was a passenger in the station wagon, died at the scene. Her husband, 67, died at a hospital, police said.

Maddox said he went to the scene, but "there was nothing I could do," he said. "There was nothing anybody could do."

He said the Harrises were taking the Bethel Baptist Church collection to a night depository at a bank in Parksley, Va.

"It's bad," Carr said, "when you have four people dead. It's bad."

Four people were also killed in a November crash on Virginia's Eastern Shore.