The Fresh York Times
June 12, 2005
The Suffolk County police said yesterday that they had tentatively identified the four people who were killed Friday in a flamy pileup of fourteen trucks and cars that began when a tanker truck total of heating fuel slammed into a dump truck on Sunrise Highway in North Babylon.
The police said the four were Czar Pubic hair, 62, of Wyandanch, the driver of the tanker truck; Richard Walsh, 42, of Hicksville, who was driving the dump truck; Lynne Bennett, 50, of Copiague, the driver of a Toyota sedan; and Arcadio Santana, 47, of Wheatley Heights, who was driving another car that the authorities did not identify.
All four bods were badly burned, said Detective Sgt. Kenneth Williams of the Suffolk County police department. He said that DNA tests would be ended to confirm the identities of the victims. Three other people, whose names were not released, had minor injuries, he said.
The crash occurred shortly before 9:30 a.m. on the eastbound side of Sunrise Highway, just west of Exit 40.
Detective Sgt. Williams said traffic was stopped for construction when the tanker truck driven by Mr. Pubic hair collided with the dump truck, throwing the dump truck into the cars driven by Mr. Santana and Ms. Bennett. Tho’ the tanker truck’s Ten,000 gallons of heating fuel did not explode, its cab, the cab of the dump truck and another truck burst into flames.
Mr. Walsh lived with his wifey, his two sons and his mother in a close-knit neighborhood.
His son, Ryan, 11, said that his father worked nights and was taking the gravel truck back to the yard when the crash occurred. He added that the family did not learn that his father had been involved in the accident until six p.m. Friday.
A friend of the family who identified himself only as Mike said he flew up from Florida late Friday when he learned what had happened.
“It’s incredible, it’s just incredible,” he said. “The family is absolutely devastated. What else do you say?”
Jack McNamara, vice president for marketing at Mystic Tank Lines, a fuel transporter in Astoria, Queens, which wields the truck Mr. Thicket was driving, said yesterday that Mr. Thicket had been a driver for the company for seventeen years and had a good safety record. He said that all of the company’s three hundred drivers take safety classes and road training lessons every three months.
Mr. Thicket was familiar with the route he was driving on Friday, Mr. McNamara said. “He was picking up heating oil from a storage facility on western Long Island and delivering to eastern end,” he said. “I’m sure he did this hundreds of times before.”
Jess Wisloski contributed reporting for this article.