Insane Wreck

Insane Wreck

Thompson – They were destined for death.
Seconds before the gray Toyota Corolla would smash into a dump truck and kill all six of its young passengers, at least two drivers called 911 to report a car speeding east on Route 17B – in a westbound lane. Another driver without a cell phone watched the car barely miss an oncoming tractor-trailer. Madeline Jimenez of Woodridge turned to her daughter and said of the driver with long blond hair:
"That girl is going to kill herself today."
It was just before noon on Wednesday.
"She was out of control long before the accident," Sullivan County District Attorney Steve Lungen said.
The driver, camp counselor Irina Mironova, 25, of Miami Beach, Fla., had a suspended license. She couldn't get insurance coverage because on May 7 she was ticketed in Florida for driving 107 mph in a 70 mph zone, said Frank Pinela of the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.
By the time police could respond to the 911 calls, the six young people from the Camp Atlanta Dance Camp in South Fallsburg were dead inside the pile of twisted, sheared metal and crushed glass that was their car. The 1994 Corolla had fishtailed into oncoming traffic and slid into the bottom of the truck. The car's engine ended up in the truck's chassis.
"A pile of rubble" is how Sullivan County Sheriff Dan Hogue described the car.
The bodies were mangled so badly, he couldn't tell if the six passengers in the five-passenger car were wearing seat belts. The driver of the Sullivan County Department of Public Works dump truck, Michael Cooper of Mongaup Valley, was taken to Catskill Regional Medical Center for bruises and was released. The county sent grief counselors to his home yesterday. Cooper declined comment.
Mironova, the driver, was the oldest person in the car. The youngest passenger, Gabrielle Saybelman of Brooklyn, was 12. None of the other four victims, whose ages ranged from 14 to 16, was from Sullivan County. The youngsters were headed to Lake Superior State Park in Bethel to go swimming.
"What we had here is a horrific accident of young people with a driver who insisted on driving fast and erratically for no reason at all," said Lungen, who said that it "doesn't appear" the camp knew about Mironova's suspended license.
It was an accident witnesses saw coming even before those 911 calls.

LESS THAN THREE MILES away from the crash, on a crowded Route 42 outside Monticello, the Toyota with Florida plates passed Madeline Jimenez twice, "cutting me off," she said. By the time the two cars got on Route 17B, via Route 17, Mironova was careening into a lane with oncoming traffic.
The accident, which sheriff's Sgt. Don Prince described as "the worst I've seen in 35 years," was even more horrific because family and friends of the victims saw the aftermath.
At least two cars were following the Corolla to Lake Superior, about five miles from the accident. A passenger in one car, Max Kapitannikov, lost a brother in the crash, Illya, 16, of Brooklyn. When Max arrived at the scene, he kneeled by the side of Route 17B and prayed. Sources say Max didn't learn of his brother's death until Wednesday evening, when a head count at Camp Atlanta revealed that Illya was missing.
Kapitannikov's mother, Anna, owns the camp, which used to be the Mur's bungalow colony. When she arrived at the accident scene, she collapsed and was taken to Catskill Regional Medical Center, where she remained yesterday afternoon.
Yesterday, a 2-inch-wide gash was cut into the eastbound side of the accident scene, which has so many accidents Hogue called it "a danger zone." A size-9 flip-flop with gray and green polka dots lay on the westbound side.
About 10 miles away, at Camp Atlanta, just about all of the approximately 50 campers had gone home. At 11 a.m. yesterday, when the kids should have been playing ball or swimming, the only sound was the chirping of a single bird.
A bulletin board with a message scrawled before the campers learned of the deaths of their summer buddies was a remnant of a flickering moment of hope:
"God Forbid Any (one) is dead," it read.

Please drive responsibly and remember this story next time you think about speeding anywhere but the track.




Responders thought it was a neon, not a corolla!

If I were the families of the dead, I would definately look into a lawsuit against the camp, for allowing an UNINSURED driver to drive 5 young children. Thats ridiculous. Im sure the parents were unaware that she had a bad driving record and no insurance.

That fuckin pisses ya off... I mean damn, that bitch was just stupid. I feel sorry for the families who lost their kids. Personally I think that girl who was driving should rot in hell for not looking out for those children's safety first. Even if she was a psycho driver --- doing so with children in your car is fucking stupid.