Woman killed by runaway truck at West Virginia music festival
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MASONTOWN, W.Va. -- In an instant Sunday morning, all was not good at the All Good Music Festival in Masontown.
People were still asleep or just starting to wake up in tents and cars packed onto the sprawling concert grounds when a GMC pickup truck began rolling down a hill, out of control.
A man was in the driver's seat as the car careened forward 30 or 40 feet, striking at least 4 cars, several tents and coming to a stop at 8:48 a.m., when it rolled over three young women from Mount Pleasant, S.C., said Cpl. Rick Dotson of the Preston County sheriff's department.
Nicole Miller, 20, was pronounced dead at the scene. Two other women, Elizabeth Doran, 20, and Yen Ton, 21, were seriously injured and taken by helicopter to Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown. No update on their conditions was available.
The man in the vehicle was in his early 20s, but his name has not been released, Cpl. Dotson said. No charges have been filed, and the investigation is ongoing, he said.
Several hours after the incident, it still wasn't clear why the man had lost control of his vehicle and whether the women had been sleeping or if they had been inside or outside their tent at the time of the accident.
But on the concert stage, the music was still playing. About 30,000 people attended this year's 15th annual weekend concert, which ended Sunday.
Each year, people travel to the festival from all around the country to camp in the Allegheny Mountains and listen to more than 40 hours of live music from bands performing rock, bluegrass, electronic, jam, reggae and funk sets.
The hordes started arriving at the Marvin's Mountaintop campground site on Thursday. They parked their cars on most of the available grassy space, some on the sides of hills, and set up camp with tents and blankets.
One man sat on the grass, playing with his phone. The sound of sirens rushing to the women crushed by the truck a mile or so away from where he was sitting had awakened him, he said.
And now the man, who declined to give his name, was sitting next to his own car, which had just slid 20 feet down the hill it was parked on when the parking brake slipped. It came to a stop when it collided with a pickup truck. No one was hurt, and the man was sure both cars could drive away from the scene.
First Published July 18, 2011 12:00 am
