Mother wants answers in dragster tragedy
‘I’ve got to bury my two girls,’ tearful woman says
 Russell Ingle / Independent Appeal via AP Authorities move a victim into an awaiting ambulance after a vehicle accident occurred Saturday, in Selmer, Tenn. A drag-racing vehicle lost control during a parade and spun into a crowd of bystanders. |
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SELMER, Tenn. - A tearful mother of two teenage girls killed when a speeding dragster skidded into a crowd demanded answers on Monday, saying the high-powered car should never have been on a city street.
“Somebody’s got to take responsibility for this. I’ve got to bury my two girls,” Darla Griswell said. “They were there just to have fun.”
Her daughters, Nicole, 19, and Raven, 15, were among six young people killed by the car when it fishtailed into the crowd Saturday at the Cars for Kids show in Selmer, a small town about 80 miles east of Memphis.
At least 23 other spectators were hurt, many seriously.
Authorities said Monday it would take time to figure out exactly why the car lost control. The district attorney said he has not yet decided whether to bring criminal charges, although that was still a possibility.
Four high-powered dragsters, including one driven by pro drag racer Troy Critchley, were scheduled for the show’s popular “burnout exhibition” in which drivers spin their tires to make them heat up and smoke. Hundreds of spectators, unprotected by guard rails, lined both sides of a three-lane highway to watch the show.
Critchley was first off the line, but he lost control and crashed into spectators standing several rows deep in front of a fast-food restaurant.
Amateur video of the crash, broadcast on WMC-TV in Memphis, showed the car’s engine revving loudly before the vehicle sped down the highway. After a few hundred feet, the smoking car skidded off the road and into the crowd.
The founder of Cars for Kids, Larry Price, was standing in the road during the burnout, signaling each driver when to start and stop. Drivers usually burn their tires for 20 to 50 feet, Price said, but Critchley went much farther before losing control.
Price said he waved his arms trying to get Critchley to stop, but the car was already past him.
“I was trying to get him out of it, you know,” Price said.
Critchley, an Australian who now lives in Wylie, Texas, was treated and released from a hospital and interviewed by authorities. His whereabouts on Monday were not immediately known. A woman who answered the phone Monday at a Goodyear service station in Wylie said Critchley’s racing team shares the building, but she said no one from the racing team was around.
A statement on Critchley’s Web site Monday said he believed the road had been inspected and approved for the burnout exhibition.
“After a straight start, the car skidded off the road. Mr. Critchley did everything humanly possible to keep the car on the road,” the statement says. “Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do.”
The statement also says Selmer police went down the length of the highway before the burnout and told the crowd to move back.
Rodger Pitchford, who suffered a broken right leg, chipped vertebrae and bruises in the crash, confirmed that account. Pitchford, 18, said two police cars drove down the parade route and advised spectators to move farther back from the road.
People heeded the warning initially, then moved back in when the car was coming to get a better look, he said.
“It was our choice to stand there,” he said. “We shouldn’t have been that close. If we had stayed back, I don’t think that many people would have been injured because we would have had time to move out of the way.”
Griswell said it was clear to her that somebody made a mistake in allowing the exhibition.
“A drag-strip car should not have been on a city street in Selmer,” she said between sobs while sitting on a porch swing with friends at her home in Finger, a community just a few miles away from Selmer.
Raven, who would have been a 10th-grader in the fall, was crushed under the race car and died at the scene, Griswell said. Nicole died at the hospital in Memphis.
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“Nicole lost one of her legs, and I’m pretty sure she almost bled out before they could get her to Memphis,” Griswell said. “They kept giving her blood, but they could never get her blood pressure back up.”
The car show, which includes a street fair and a parade of several hundred cars — from hotrods to antiques — raises money for children’s hospitals and is held annually in Selmer on Father’s Day weekend. It’s by far the largest tourist draw in this rural county of 25,000 people.
The wreck also killed Sean Michael Driskill, 22, of Adamsville; Brook L. Pope, 20, of Selmer; Scarlett Replogle, 15, of Selmer; and Kimberly A. Barfield, 17, of Adamsville.
Barfield, an employee of the restaurant, had apparently taken a break to watch the dragster exhibition. Her sister, Destinee Wilson, 8, was waiting for her to join the family for a weekend camping trip when she learned about the crash.
“She was my sister, and she was a good one, too,” Destinee said.
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