Car Race's Drivers, Spectators Reticent

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Car Strikes Crowd at Illegal Street Race

Eight people are dead and at least five injured after a car hits a group of people watching an illegal race in Prince George's County.

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"This will just be another cry from the wilderness to ask for more police presence, like we've been asking for years," said Accokeek resident Judy Allen-Leventhal, past president of a civic group.

High said police are attentive to complaints from the community about speeding and reckless driving, noting that 5,550 traffic citations are issued in the county each month -- a 25 percent increase, he said, from four years ago.

"People have to take responsibility," he said. "They know this is wrong. They're basically good people who are law-abiding. They have to obey the law in this area as well."

The injured included Craig Simms, 37, of Edgewood, whom police briefly listed as dead; and Gregory Johnson Jr., 15, of Waldorf.

An image emerged yesterday of the victims: not of young street punks but of family men with a fondness for fast cars. Their ages spanned four decades. Gaines -- who went to the race with his son, daughter and 13-year-old granddaughter -- was a construction worker, married for 40 years. Courtney was a groundskeeper at Patuxent River Naval Air Station. Pinkney worked for a cement company. Gardner sold car parts.

Lopez went with his girlfriend. They arrived early and napped in his car, according to stepfather Icsael Melgar. At race time, she wanted to sleep, so he left her in the car and went to watch the race with his friends.

"He used to go to races almost every week," Melgar said. "I told him, 'This can't happen anymore.' I know he kept doing it."

People who said they knew the racers or were at the race placed flowers at the crash site yesterday, placing some in the spray-painted circles that marked where bodies, body parts and clothing had fallen.

Irma Harris of Clinton, who had known Gardner for 15 years, stopped by with flowers and balloons. "He was my best male friend," said Harris, 53. "Talked to him about anything and everything."

Also at the site was Gregory Johnson Sr., who said his son was in a Bethesda hospital's intensive-care unit with a broken leg, shattered pelvis and injured spleen, so immobilized that he could only nod his head at questions.

He said his son had told him that he was going to the race with his 18-year-old cousin and promised to call when they were safely headed home. "I never got a phone call back," Johnson said.

His son was hit so hard that his boots flew off his feet, he said.