Seven people were killed in a crash Thursday evening in Idaho, near Yellowstone National Park, an Idaho police said, according to Idaho State Police. Both vehicles started a fire after the collision.
The six people killed were in Mercedes vans carrying 14 people, state police said. Dodge Ram, the driver of the pickup, was also killed.
The crash happened before 7:15pm on US Highway 20 near Lake Henry, a popular spot for hiking, biking and fishing in eastern Idaho, about 15 miles from Yellowstone. The cause was under investigation.
State police said authorities have summoned ambulances and other air and ground resources to deal with crashes due to the severity of the injury.
Fremont County Coroner Brenda Dye has identified the pickup driver and only resident as Isaiah Moreno, 25, of Texas. Dai said he was waiting for DNA test results to identify the six people in the van that were killed because the bodies were not recognized.
All six of them came from outside the United States, Dai said in an interview Friday. The two were from Italy, and it was not clear where the other four came from. They were part of a group that was touring Yellowstone, she said.
Citing the Chinese consulate in San Francisco, Chinese state media said Chinese citizens were among the dead. Five Chinese people have been killed and eight more were injured in the clash, the Xinhua Congress reported. It was not immediately clear why it seemed to contradict Dai's numbers.
The consulate asked U.S. officials to share the findings of the accident and provide support to families of the dead, Xinhua reported.
She said two other people on the highway ran out of their car to help them out after the crash. They “were trying to pull as much as possible out of the van that was emitting smoke,” Dai said. She said she managed to help eight people out of eight vans, including children, before the van was set on fire.
U.S. Highway 20 was closed for nearly seven hours, but emergency responders and the Idaho Transportation Department were working on managing the site and clearing roads, state police said.
Christopher Buckley Reports of contributions.
