According to the Westchester County Police Department, a violent accident on the Hutchinson River Parkway in the early hours of Sunday morning claimed the lives of five young people.
A sixth child, a 9-year-old boy who was riding in the cargo area of the Nissan Rogue that crashed, survived and was taken to Westchester Medical Center. The boy’s injuries are not life-threatening, police said.
The five dead children, four men and one woman, ranged in age from 8 to 17. The driver was 16, police said.
Police said the children were residents of Derby, Connecticut, a manufacturing town 10 miles west of New Haven described as “the smallest town in Connecticut.”
The crash occurred as the car was traveling north on the Hutchinson River Parkway, between Mamaroneck Road and Mamaroneck Avenue near the Scarsdale/White Plains border. The vehicle left the road for unknown reasons and collided with a tree, where it caught fire, police said.
While trucks sometimes crash into a low bridge that crosses the Hutchinson River Parkway at Mamaroneck Road, the crash site was not a known trouble spot on Sunday, police said.
But one local news research in 2015 using state data obtained through the Freedom of Information Law described New York’s most dangerous stretches of roadway. The Hutchinson River Parkway, near Mamaroneck Avenue, was on the list.