Thursday, July 6 2023 23:22
CROWN POINT, Ind. (WLS) — A family is reeling after their 19-year-old daughter was killed and their 13-year-old daughter critically injured in a Northwest Indiana crash.
The accident occurred Tuesday in the 7000 block of East 117th Avenue just after 4:30 p.m
Witnesses told police that a Subaru SUV traveling east was following a Jeep. It attempted to pass the Jeep, and crossed the center line into oncoming traffic, where it collided with a Kia driving west.
The Kia driver, 19-year-old Grace Norris, was pronounced dead at the scene. Two 13-year-old children, one of them Grace's sister, were also in the car and were injured.
Grace's father said he was driving his little sister around to pick up friends for Independence Day.
“My daughter Emma asked my daughter Grace, ‘Can you pick up some friends?'” said dad Jason Norris.
About an hour after the brothers left together, Jason Norris' phone rang. The girls did not make it to their second stop, and their father said no one was answering repeated calls. So he tracked down their car, found it along 117th Avenue.
“We realized that their location didn't move in 50 minutes,” he said.
Within seconds, Norris and his eldest daughter rushed to find them.
“We covered about a mile and a half, according to the application, and as we were going up the hill we saw all kinds of police cars and ambulances, and I thought… The first thing we saw when we got to the crime scene was the coroner's van,” he said, not unable to hold back her tears. “We know.”
Emma was flown to Comer Children's Hospital. His parents said when he woke up on Wednesday he had no memory of the accident that had killed his older sister.
The Subaru driver is a 44 year old woman from Crown Point. No further information was available and no word on possible charges against the driver.
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