© Lori Van Buren / Albany Times Union / AFPDistraught family members at the scene of Saturday's limo crash.
The limo that killed 20 people in a crash in upstate New York was unsafe and should never have been on the road, Governor Andrew Cuomo said. Instead, a close-knit group of family and friends are dead.
The limousine was carrying a group of friends and relatives to a 30th birthday party near Albany, New York, on
Saturday, when it plowed through a junction, hit two pedestrians and a parked SUV, and plunged into a ditch. All 17 passengers were killed, along with the two stricken pedestrians and the limo's driver.
Among the victims were sisters Mary Dyson, Abby Jackson, Allison King, and Amy Steenburg; and husbands Adam Jackson, Robert Dyson and Axel Steenburg. Amy and Axel Steenburg had only been married since June, while Abby and Adam Jackson left behind two daughters: four-year-old Archer and 16-month-old Elle. The remainder of the group were close school and neighborhood friends, including another newlywed couple, Erin and Shane McGowan.
"They were all friends," Valerie Abeling, Mrs. McGowan's aunt, told the
New York Times. "Most of them were lifelong friends. Relatives, cousins, family." Grieving friends have launched a crowdfunding campaign for Archer and Elle Jackson, the two children orphaned by the crash.
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