Wrong-way crash kills 3 sorority sisters

BOWLING GREEN, Ohio -- A wrong-way driver slammed head-on Friday into a car full of sorority sisters who were driving to an airport for a spring break trip to the Dominican Republic, killing three of the young women and the other driver.

The car carrying the three Alpha Xi Delta members, ages 19 to 21, and two other sorority sisters hit the wrong-way vehicle overnight on a rise in Interstate 75 south of Toledo, just miles from Bowling Green State University, which they all attended.

The two survivors were seriously injured.

Sixteen sorority sisters were heading to the Detroit airport in different cars for a 5:30 a.m. flight, a friend said. Another vehicle carrying five of the students narrowly avoided the wrong-way driver, Ohio state troopers said.

"I don't think the college girls ever saw it coming. Nothing they could have done to avoid the crash," Wood County Sheriff Mark Wasylyshyn said.

The wrong-way driver, Winifred D. Lein, 69, of Perrysburg, Ohio, was traveling alone, authorities said. Investigators are looking into why she was driving on the wrong side of the divided highway.

Killed were Rebekah Blakkolb, 20, a junior from Aurora, Ohio; Christina Goyett, 19, a sophomore from Bay City, Mich., who was studying teacher education; and Sarah Hammond, 21, a junior from Yellow Springs, Ohio, majoring in apparel merchandising, the university said.

Goyett was excited about her first trip to the Dominican Republic, said Dee Bishop, a family friend in Bay City. "She was an absolutely wonderful, positive, happy person," Bishop said.

Students dropped off flowers and held each other outside the sorority house in Bowling Green.

The accident happened around 2:30 a.m. Truckers had reported the wrong-way driver, and a state highway patrol officer had seen her car and begun a pursuit when the crash happened.

Lein was cited in 2002 in Toledo Municipal Court for a lane changing violation, according to court records.