Crash Kills 4 Members of Church Choir en Route to Revival Meeting

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/29/us/church-choir-death-tractor-van.html

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The members of the Shiloh Baptist Church choir in Blackstone, Va., had just arrived outside another church about 20 miles away for a revival meeting Tuesday. But they would not be singing that night.

Just as the choir’s van turned to enter the parking lot of Mount Zion Baptist Church, a truck hauling a trailer full of metal slammed into the vehicle, killing four people and injuring seven more, the Virginia State Police said.

Lafayette Dickens, a member of the choir who was traveling to the revival in his own car, arrived on the scene in Dinwiddie County, Va., shortly after the crash.

“I was coming from work and thought I was going to go there and it was going to be a routine church program, because we sing at different churches all the time,” he said Wednesday. “I thought it was going to be like any other time, but I guess the good Lord had other ideas.”

By the time he got there, the police had closed off the area and rescue workers were busy removing the victims from the van, which was lying on its side, Mr. Dickens said. He watched as rescue workers pulled people from the wreckage, strapped them to gurneys and rushed them to ambulances and a helicopter.

“It was pretty bad,” Mr. Dickens said. “I just tried to calm people who lost loved ones as we found out who they were.”

“We were there about a year ago,” he said of Mount Zion. “Going for revivals is kind of the norm for country churches.”

William D. Coleburn, the mayor of Blackstone, said the town — with roughly 3,600 residents — was devastated by the crash. “Everybody down here in southside Virginia knows everybody,” he said.

“The people we lost and the people who were injured were the cream of the crop,” Mr. Coleburn said. “Good God-fearing people who left their church on Tuesday night here in Blackstone and went 20 miles down the road to spread the good Word to another church.”

There were 11 people inside the van when it was struck at 6:54 p.m. Tuesday, the Virginia State Police said. They said the van overturned several times while the truck ran off the road and crashed into the guardrail.

The police said the crash occurred on Route 460, a road with a tree-dotted median and two lanes of traffic moving in each direction. It is the closest thing the area had to an expressway, said Mr. Coleburn, who referred to it as “the Good Old Boy Interstate.”

The police identified the deceased on Wednesday as James Farley, 87; Wartena Somerville, 36; Delois Williams, 72; and Constance Wynn, 85.

They all had deep ties to the community, Mr. Dickens and Mr. Coleburn said: Mr. Farley was a former groundskeeper for Shiloh Baptist Church; Ms. Somerville was a local schoolteacher with a 9-month-old daughter; Ms. Williams was the chairwoman of the church’s deacon’s council; and Ms. Wynn spent more than two decades on the town council.

“They were all good people,” said Mr. Dickens, who also serves as a deacon at the church. “We are all doing the best we can today. It is surreal.”

The driver of the truck, Robert Lee Allen, 47, of Norfolk, Va., was taken to a nearby hospital for minor injuries, the police said. Corinne Geller, a spokeswoman for the state police, said an investigation into the crash was ongoing.

Four of the injured victims were transported to Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center in Richmond after the crash, according to a spokesman, Pat Kane. Three others were taken to nearby hospitals, the police said.

Mr. Kane said he did not have information about two of the patients on Wednesday, but the other two remained in critical condition.

Shiloh Baptist Church played an influential role in the civil rights movement, Mr. Coleburn said.

“During Blackstone’s darker days when blacks didn’t have representation and were denied opportunities for representation, black leaders met in that church,” he said. “They used to call it Holy Ghost Headquarters because they were doing God’s work, trying to have an equal voice.”

The church served as a nerve center of sorts for voting rights advocates who challenged the at-large electoral systems of Virginia’s cities and towns, which tended to favor white voters and candidates over black ones, Mr. Coleburn said. A 1986 court ruling by U.S. District Judge Robert R. Merhige Jr., a champion of desegregation, abolished those systems in Blackstone and other nearby towns.

“The church has always been a historic part of the town and prominent citizens have come out of it,” Mr. Dickens said. “It is a very substantial church in the area, especially in the black community.”

Mr. Dickens drove by Mount Zion Baptist Church on his way home from work as he spoke to a reporter on the phone Wednesday night.

“Every day I travel this road,” he said. “I am passing the church right now, where it all happened. They have got a revival going on tonight. It is all so tragic.”