
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, June 15, 1993                   TAG: 9306150266
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C1   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CRASH KILLS FAMILY

Three members of a Dublin family were killed Sunday night when their car pulled into the path of an oncoming tractor-trailer on a West Virginia highway, authorities said.

Joseph L. Hamill, 34; Vickie Diane Donley Hamill, 37; and Nathan James Hamill, 4, all died at the scene of the 6 p.m. accident, said Cpl. J.D. Simms of the Sheriff's Department in Nicholas County, W.Va.

Vickie Hamill was driving south on U.S. 19 near Summersville, following a line of traffic along the two-lane road, when she turned left into the opposite lane, Simms said.

The driver of the truck, 33-year-old James Hammond of Gaston, S.C., said he never had a chance to hit the brakes when Hamill's car, towing a boat trailer, tried to cross his path.

"I didn't have six feet in front of me," Hammond said from his room at Summersville Memorial Hospital, where he was being treated for back injuries.

"She turned right in front of me."

Hammond said he had just finished listening on the radio to the Champion 500 stock car race from Pocono, Pa., and was heading to Fairmont, W.Va., about two hours away, with a load of toilet paper.

Hammond thought the woman may have been trying to slip onto a road that intersected with U.S. 19. He said she must have seen him approaching; there was nothing blocking the view between the two vehicles.

Simms, however, said there were cars in front of the Hamills', and said that maybe she swerved into the other lane on instinct, trying to avoid rear-ending a car, never seeing the truck. "We'll never know . . . " Simms said.

When the Hamills' car turned in front of the truck, Hammond said it was like a pistol firing point-blank.

The truck slammed into the car and kept going a few hundred feet, then hit an embankment, Simms said. The car ended up underneath.

"It was unreal," said Hammond, a husband and father of two. "I tried to put myself in her place . . . and I can't. . . .

"I'm just a little shook up and wondering what made that woman turn in front of me," Hammond said. "It was a ride I don't want to have to take again."

Simms said he anticipated no charges being filed.

Keywords:
FATALITY

by CNB