WARREN, Ohio – A speeding sport utility vehicle taken without permission and carrying eight teenagers crashed into a guardrail Sunday morning and flipped over into a swampy pond in northeast Ohio, killing five boys and a woman, the state highway patrol said.
The Honda Passport veered off the left side of a road and overturned just south of the city of Warren, about 60 miles east of Cleveland, Lt. Anne Ralston said. Investigators say it came to rest upside down in the swamp and sank with five of the victims trapped inside.
A sixth, who was thrown from the SUV during the crash, was found under it when the vehicle was taken out of the water.
The two boys who survived escaped from the submerged vehicle and ran a quarter-mile to a home to call 911, the highway patrol said.
State Highway Patrol Lt. Brian Holt said at an evening news conference that speed was a factor, although investigators were still trying to determine the speed at the time of the accident.
Uncle says rescue try failed as 7 perished
The uncle of one of seven people killed in a house fire in southeastern Kentucky says he tried to rescue them but was too late.
Gino Cima said Sunday that he made it to the single-story house within minutes of hearing the news Saturday morning and found two bodies by a side door.
Cima says one body was of his adult nephew, and it appeared he had been headed to a room where five young children were sleeping. The other was of his nephew’s pregnant fiancée.
He says he then raced to the front of the house, but the children’s bodies were already lined up in the yard.
Officials have not identified the victims, but family members say the five children killed ranged in age from 10 months to 3 years.
Study reports stress worsens heart woes
New studies show the toll that stress can take on the heart. Researchers have found higher rates of cardiac problems in veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, in New Orleans residents six years after Hurricane Katrina and in Greeks struggling through that country’s financial turmoil.
Doctors say that disasters and prolonged stress can raise fight-or-flight hormones that affect blood pressure, blood sugar and other things in ways that make heart trouble more likely.
Labor Department head to be named
President Obama is close to naming Thomas Perez, a civil rights official in the Justice Department, as his choice to head the Department of Labor, two people familiar with the process say.
His nomination could come as early as Monday, the people familiar with the process said Saturday. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak prior to the official announcement.
