The crash killed two of Hammond’s fellow students and the driver of the second car, 69-year-old Winifred Lein, the Wood County post of the Ohio Highway Patrol told The (Toledo) Blade. The two other BGSU students were critically injured in the crash.
Hammond grew up on a farm south of Yellow Springs and attended Greenon High School through an open-enrollment program that allows students to attend neighboring school districts, Greenon school officials said. Don Dunstan, a guidance counselor at Greenon, said she has known Hammond and her family — her parents and older sister — since Sarah was in seventh grade.
In high school, Sarah was a “good, solid student” — a four-year cheerleader who carried a 3.5 grade-point average, Dunstan said.
“She was bubbly and outgoing, and she was well-liked by everyone,” the guidance counselor said.
BGSU officials identified the other two students killed as Rebekah Blakkolb, 20, of Aurora, a junior in the College of Education and Human Development, and Christina Goyett, 19, of Bay City, Mich., a sophomore in the College of Education and Human Development. Hammond was a junior in the College of Education and Human Development.
The university identified the injured women as Angelica Mormile, 19, of Garfield Heights, a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences, and Kayla Somoles, 19, of Cleveland, a sophomore in the College of Education and Human Development.
All of the women in the northbound vehicle were sisters in the Alpha Xi Delta sorority, according to a fellow member.
Wood County Sheriff Mark Wasylyshyn said the accident occurred at a crest in the highway and he doubts the northbound student who was driving had any warning.
“I don’t think the college girls ever saw it coming. Nothing they could have done to avoid the crash,” Wasylyshyn said. “The college girls apparently did nothing wrong. They were just driving northbound and a woman driving in the opposite direction in the wrong way on the roadway hit them head-on.”
The BGSU students were heading to an airport in Detroit as the university is entering its spring break period.
The patrol had been alerted to the wrong-way driver and a trooper was searching for the vehicle Friday morning, but did not locate it before the crash, according to the patrol. According to tapes obtained from the Wood County Sheriff’s Office, at least four motorists called 911 just after 2:10 a.m. to report a car going south in the northbound lanes on I-75.
This story contains material from The (Toledo) Blade and from The Associated Press.
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