Crash kills kids en route to visit wounded dad

[unhappycamper]

Crash kills kids en route to visit wounded dad
The Associated Press
Posted : Sunday Oct 21, 2007 15:06:38 EDT

DALLAS — Two children of a Fort Bliss soldier flown back from Iraq with combat injuries are dead and a third is on life support following a car accident on the way to visit their father in the hospital, Army officials said.

Army Spc. John Austin Johnson was waiting for his wife and three kids to visit him at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio Oct. 13 when another soldier told him his family’s car had rolled over four times on Interstate 10 about 12 miles east of Ozona on the gusty West Texas plains.

“He said, ‘Two of my children are dead?”’ Army Sgt. 1st Class Eugene Schmidt told The Dallas Morning News. “And we started crying.”

Schmidt said Johnson’s wife, Lisa, overcorrected the steering in her sport utility vehicle after encountering a blast of wind on the drive from El Paso. The couple’s youngest children, 2-year-old Logan and 5-year-old Ashley, died at the scene.

Tyler Johnson, 9, suffered massive head injuries and remains on life support at Children’s Medical Center in Dallas. He was listed in critical but stable condition Sunday, a hospital spokeswoman said.

“He’s a fighter. Even the doctors are amazed he’s still alive,” said Schmidt, who says the family is too grief-stricken to speak publicly. “We’re praying.”


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/10/ap_childrencrash_071021/