By Will York
Associated Press
Monday, June 18, 2007

SELMER, Tenn., June 17 -- There were no guardrails between spectators and a highway where a drag-racing car bolted out of control, killing six people during a charity event.

The Tennessee Highway Patrol declined to make a statement Sunday about road conditions or safety procedures during the parade of cars Saturday evening.

"It ain't really safe to do anything with drag cars on a city street," said spectator Garett Moore, 19, who said he was about 15 feet away from the wreck but was uninjured. "They shouldn't have done it."

Tennessee Highway Patrol spokesman Mike Browning said the dead included two 15-year-old girls and a 17-year-old girl. The accident injured 18 others, who were taken to hospitals in Tennessee and Mississippi.

Authorities identified the driver as professional drag racer Troy Critchley, an Australian based in Wylie, Tex. He suffered minor injuries and was taken by car to a hospital for treatment.

No criminal charges have been filed against Critchley, Browning said.

Mourners placed small candles, flowers, a teddy bear and a ceramic angel at the crash site.

The accident happened during an "exhibition burnout" -- in which a dragster's tires are spun fast enough to make them smoke -- at the Cars for Kids charity event in Selmer, about 90 miles east of Memphis.

On amateur video broadcast on WMC-TV in Memphis, the car's engine is heard revving before the vehicle speeds down the highway. After a few hundred feet, the car skids off the road in front of a drive-in restaurant.

Selmer Police Chief Neal Burks said "bodies were flying into the air."

Part of the highway has a guardrail, but not that stretch.

Drivers of other dragsters in the parade had been spinning their tires and then accelerating quickly, but they put on the brakes before going past the guardrails, Moore said.

"This is definitely not the kind of road you should be drag-racing on," Moore said. "This isn't a flat, open surface like you have at a racetrack."

Nick Staples of Columbus, Miss., who was at the show with his wife and three children, said he was standing 20 feet from where the car plowed into the audience.

"There should have been guardrails," Staples said. "But even if there had been, it wouldn't have mattered."

The Highway Patrol said Raven Griswell, 15, of Finger, Tenn., and Sean Michael Driskill, 22, of Adamsville, Tenn., died at the scene. Four others -- Brook L. Pope, 20, of Selmer; Scarlett Replogle, 15, of Selmer; Kimberly A. Barfield, 17, of Adamsville; and Nicole Griswell, no age or hometown given -- died at hospitals.

Forty thousand to 60,000 people had been expected to attend the event.

After a parade of vehicles ranging from antique cars to modern dragsters, Moore thought the show was over.

"I was about to head across the street, and I saw him barreling toward us," he said.

Matthew Brammer, administrator of the AMS Pro Modified Series, which sanctions drag races, said Critchley had driven the car involved in the wreck in competition.

Critchley's Web site says he began his career in an engine-building shop in Brisbane, Australia, in 1986 and then raced on the Australian circuit in the 1990s. He moved to the United States in 1998.