Fiery Slippery Rock Twp. crash kills four

Four members of a North Carolina family who were heading home after spending the Fourth of July holiday with relatives in Butler County died in a fiery collision Monday when their car struck the fuel tank of a tractor-trailer that had traveled through a stop sign.

The lone surviving member of the family, a man whose relatives live in the area, was flown to Mercy Hospital, Uptown, where he was in critical condition with severe burns, state police said. Their names were being withheld last night pending notification of relatives.

The truck driver, a Utah man who can't speak English, was charged with homicide by vehicle, reckless driving and failure to yield at a stop sign in connection with the accident that occurred shortly before 1:30 p.m. at the intersection of Route 8 and Branchton Road in Slippery Rock Township.

The driver of the car "had his clothes burned off him," said Merlin Batykefer Sr., who tried to help the victims. "He kept hollering, 'My family! My family!' ... He said his wife and three children were in the car."

Butler County Coroner William F. Young III said the bodies of a 4-year-old boy and his two sisters, at least one of whom was a teen, were found in the back seat area of what remained of the car. The body of their mother was in the front passenger seat area, he said. The father was driving the car, Young said.

The truck driver, Ejub Grcic, 54, of West Valley, Utah, was not badly injured. Authorities said he had a Utah's driver's license and was driving for EH Transport, also of West Valley.

State police said the rig was traveling east along Branchton Road when it went through the stop sign and into the path of the car, which was traveling south along Route 8.

The car apparently collided with the fuel tank of the truck, causing the rig and the car to burst into a ball of fire.

"Everything over there was in flames," said Batykefer, who heard the crash while he ate lunch in his back yard. "The driver was holding his head, saying, "Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"

Batykefer said he and his son, Merlin Jr., placed blankets on the crash victim to help put out the flames and took him to their front yard.

The elder Batykefer said he was unable to get near the car because of the flames.

"It was just banging and blowing to beat the band," he said.

Batykefer said he did not have a fire extinguisher and didn't know if one would have helped anyway because the flames were so intense.

He said he did not hear tires squealing before the crash.

Young said he believes the North Carolina family was on its way home when the accident occurred.

"I understand they had just left relatives, his parents I believe, and were heading home to North Carolina," Young said.

Trooper Rob Lagoon said police were having difficulty interviewing Grcic because he does not speak English. Lagoon did not know the man's nationality.

Grcic, who did not require hospital treatment, was awaiting arraignment last night on four counts of homicide by vehicle and single counts of reckless driving, failure to stop at a stop sign and failure to obey a traffic control device.

Slippery Rock officials and residents said the intersection is notorious for severe accidents.

The elder Batykefer, whose house is a converted convenience store facing the intersection, said a concrete step at his front door has a football-sized chunk missing because a car landed there in an earlier accident.

Batykefer said he and his neighbors have asked the township to install a traffic signal at the intersection. He said the family has witnessed 16 accidents, including fatalities, there.

Accident statistics for the intersection were not immediately available from PennDOT.

An official with the Slippery Rock Fire and Rescue Team said the crew has responded to several crashes at the intersection.

Valerie Warlack, who drives through the intersection daily to get to her job at the nearby Granny's Haus restaurant, said the poor visibility -- thanks to a thicket of trees near the stop sign at Branchton Road -- makes accidents almost inevitable.

"There's a lot of close calls out here. Every time we're in here working, we hear the wheels squealing from the trucks all the time. You hear the squealing of tires. You hope you don't hear the bang," said Warlack, 21, a cook at the restaurant about 500 feet from the crash site.

"The severity of the accident surprised me, and the fact that people got killed, but it was eventually going to happen," Warlack said. "People fly down Route 8 doing 70 miles an hour all the time."

Township Supervisor John Hines said the area has a history of bad accidents, although he did not have statistics.

Hines, who has been a supervisor for seven years, said PennDOT studied the intersection but said it did not need a traffic signal.

"It's a bad location," Hines said. "In my mind, a traffic signal would help there, unquestionably."