Car Hits Mattress, Leading to Another Fatal Crash

Less than 24 hours after a teenager driving the wrong way on Interstate 66 slammed head-on into a car, killing two people and injuring three others, a 21-year-old Fairfax County woman was killed in a crash on the roadway when a mattress fell into her car's path, police said.

Kritika Singh lost control of her Isuzu Rodeo about 11 p.m. Monday when her car struck the mattress on the highway near Nutley Street in Fairfax County, Virginia State Police said.

She then ran off the road into a box truck that had swerved to miss the mattress, hit a guardrail and flipped over. Singh, who was not wearing a seat belt, was thrown from the vehicle, which came to rest in the woods.

A passenger in the Isuzu, Ujjwal Joshi, was wearing a seat belt and survived. He was treated for minor injuries at the scene.

The crash occurred 21 hours after a 17-year-old from Fairfax County drove a Mitsubishi Eclipse the wrong way on I-66 and collided head-on with a Toyota, police said. Two women were killed in that crash, which happened at 2:15 a.m. near the Washington Boulevard overpass.

Police said that alcohol was a factor and that charges against the driver were pending. The teenager was taken to a hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening. A passenger, also a 17-year-old from Fairfax, was treated and released Monday. Police did not identify them because they are juveniles.

Yesterday, police identified one of the victims who died in the earlier crash as Tu Nhi Thi Nguyen, 38, a Vietnamese immigrant who lived in the District's Mount Pleasant neighborhood. Her relatives declined to comment yesterday.

Police are in the process of notifying the Vietnamese family of the other victim, a 35-year-old woman from the District, and have not released her name.

The driver of the Toyota, Hieu T. Nguyen, 35, of Falls Church, who is not related to Tu Nhi Thi Nguyen, was recuperating at Inova Fairfax Hospital yesterday.

State police said his injuries were not life-threatening. His brother, Nanh Nguyen, said the prognosis was not clear. Hieu Nguyen cannot speak, he said, and has spent a lot of time sleeping since the crash.

Another brother, Ductai Nguyen, said Hieu Nguyen was driving his friends home. "I feel sorry for those two ladies," he said. Of the teenager, he said: "How can they get onto 66 the wrong way and keep going? They had to be so drunk. . . . It is awful."

Virginia State Police 1st Sgt. James DeFord said yesterday that police have completed an accident reconstruction analysis but have not issued a report, which could provide details such as how fast the vehicles were traveling at the time of the crash.