GHENT, W.Va. — A wrong-way driver on the West Virginia Turnpike in Raleigh County had several near misses before colliding with an SUV and killing four people Monday morning, witnesses said.
Buffalo, N.Y., resident Dustin Michaud was traveling with his wife Lindsey and three children northbound at about 1:30 a.m. near the Ghent exit of I-77 when a pickup truck driven by Corey Sheward, 35, of Tiffin, Ohio, came right at them.
“He was right down the middle, no high beams, no horn, no ‘Oops this is an accident sorry I’m going the wrong way,’ nothing, flying down and I saw his tail lights disappear and he was gone,” Michaud recalled the near miss Wednesday on MetroNews “Talkline.”
A few moments later Sheward slammed into an SUV killing two women and two young girls. State police are charging him with four counts of DUI causing death and four counts of DUI causing serious bodily injury.
Michaud said his wife had just taken over driving their car when a tractor trailer they were behind swerved to the right.
“As soon as that tractor trailer cleared the way the headlights were flying at us. My wife just threw it (the car) over, locked it up and the cars behind us did the same thing. The guy was traveling at a high rate of speed. (It looked like) no remorse,” Michaud said.
The victims—Maxine Wade, 27, Carlisa Crowell, 29, Tahja Freeman, 9, and Aubrey Willoughby, 6, all from Grove City, Ohio—were pronounced dead at the scene. Four others in the vehicle remain hospitalized. Sheward is also hospitalized.
The victims were traveling home from a week at Disney World and ironically so were Michaud and his family. He said he found out a few hours later there had been a bad crash.
“You start thinking, ‘That could have been me, my family, because somebody was irresponsible and went behind the wheel drunk,'” he said.
State police believe Sheward traveled about two miles south in the northbound lanes before the accident. None of the adult victims in the SUV were wearing seat belts and none of the children were in safety seats, troopers said.