Six killed when SUV bursts into flames

ANTWERP -- An SUV burst into flames and six people were killed on a northern New York road yesterday when a tractor trailer rear-ended a vehicle in a work zone and caused a chain-reaction crash, police said.

Trooper Jack Keller said five of the people killed were riding in the SUV when it was struck. He said the vehicle had stopped or was moving slowly because of road repaving on Route 11 in the Jefferson County town of Antwerp. The tractor trailer slammed into the back of one vehicle, causing collisions with a state Department of Transportation truck and the SUV.

Keller said the driver of the first vehicle died at a hospital.

Five died in one SUV. They're identified as Laurie Dana, 42, of Lawrence; her daughters, Catelyn, 14, and Lauren, 11; Janet Dana, 69; and Shannon Planty, 14.

Tractor trailer driver James A. Mills Jr. of Myerstown, Pa., was taken to a hospital for treatment.

The DOT truck driver, Lewis Lottje Jr., 54, of Nicholville, was flown to Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse with head and chest injuries, Keller said. His condition was not available Thursday afternoon.

The crash happened near Fort Drum, 85 miles northeast of Syracuse.

"(The tractor trailer) plowed right into them," Keller said by telephone from the scene. "We're trying to determine what happened."

DOT spokesman William Reynolds confirmed that a state crew was repaving the road and that one of the agency's employees was injured and airlifted to a hospital in Syracuse.

The federal National Transportation Safety Board was notified but investigators were not going to the crash scene, a spokesman for the agency said.