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Pregnant woman dies in car wreck
Four others hurt in Callaway accident
Friday, Sept. 4, 2009
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A pregnant Lexington Park woman died Tuesday evening, police report, when the car she was driving was struck from behind by a pickup truck on Route 5 in Callaway and crossed the road into the path of an oncoming sedan.
Killed in the 6:35 p.m. crash was 24-year-old Crystal Hall, who went into cardiac arrest at the scene, according to St. Mary's sheriff's deputies. Her passengers included her 2-year-old son and her mother, 51-year-old Catherine Hall, also of Lexington Park. Helicopter crews flew them to regional hospitals for treatment of their injuries, which a relative said include broken legs. The two women and the toddler had all been at St. Mary's Hospital a short time earlier, checking on the well-being of a family member's teenage boyfriend who was injured earlier that day in a mo-ped accident, the teenager's father said.
Outside his Patuxent Park residence on Thursday, across the street from Crystal Hall's home, James Baker said she had sat with him Tuesday in the hospital's lobby as his son was being treated.
"She said, ‘I'll see you when I get home.' She never made it home," Baker said. "They left to go down the road. Not more than a half-hour later, she was dead."
Crystal Hall was driving a 1994 Mercury Sable south on the highway, authorities report, when she stopped to make a left turn onto Aster Drive, where another family member lives.
The Sable was struck by a southbound 2002 Ford F-350 truck driven by 39-year-old James Tippett of Piney Point as he tried to swerve around the car, sheriff's deputies report. Neither Tippett nor a child riding in the truck were hurt.
The Sable went across the highway's centerline and was struck head-on by a northbound 1997 Mercury Marquis occupied by driver Joseph Moschler III, 19, of Leonardtown, and a child, sheriff's deputies report. A fire in the Marquise quickly was extinguished, and Moschler and the child riding with him were taken to St. Mary's Hospital.
The two women in the Sable were not wearing seat belts, and the child riding with them was not in a safety seat, sheriff's deputies report.
"Normally, the first thing they did was strap him in the car seat," Baker said. "His mother and grandmother always strapped him in the seat. They had a car seat for every vehicle."
Neither speed nor alcohol were contributing factors in the crash, sheriff's deputies report from the preliminary investigation.
