A friend of mine, Jaci Holcomb, died last week in a horrendous car wreck. I heard about the accident long before I put two and two together and figured out it was her. When I finally did, I pretty much broke down. I had already put the press release out of my mind because the details were too horrible. Then, to imagine someone I knew, someone I had lived with briefly, someone I had shared a bathroom with, going through that…it was too much for me.
We’re a weekly paper and the accident happened in the wee small hours of Thursday morning, the day our paper hits the streets. So I looked to other papers to see if they were able to expand on the press release.
The Register Citizen carried this story:
Fiery Truck Crash Kills Woman
By KARSTEN STRAUSS
Register Citizen Staff
SALISBURY — A 29-year-old Falls Village woman was killed after the pickup truck she was driving smashed into a bridge abutment on Route 112 east of Furnace Road and caught fire just after midnight Thursday, police said.
State police from Troop B in Canaan responded to a 911 call of a vehicle fire at the rural location at 12:14 a.m. After extinguishing the flames, police and fire officials found Jacquiline Holcomb, 154 Barnes Road, dead inside the cab of the 1983 GMC 3500, according to a state police report.
It is unclear whether Holcomb died from the crash or the fire. Police are still investigating.
The impact of the collision apparently caused the truck to catch fire, according to the report. The truck sustained extensive front-end damage and was completely destroyed by flames.
Members of the Lakeville Fire Department and the state Department of Transportation were on the scene Thursday morning as well.
Torrington automotive mechanic Glenn Royals said Thursday that automobile fires are not uncommon when a vehicle is involved in a frontal collision.
“Usually the electrical wires will get scrunched,” said Royals, who owns and operates Royals Garage on Calhoun Street. “They’re in a big round, what they call a harness, and your main feed wires run through them and a couple of the wires are not fused.”
When a collision occurs, a sharp object, such as a piece of metal inside the vehicle, can cut into the harness and slice through the wires, Royals said.
“It creates a direct short and that direct short could have got the harness on fire first or it could be near a fuel line where the gas… had sprayed over the engine or where the wires were - it’s just like lighting a match,” Royals said.
Rather than bursting into flames on impact, Royals said, the fire could have started more slowly. Given that the area is rural, the accident and fire may have gone unnoticed for a while, Royals said.
The amount of plastics and synthetic materials in vehicles can cause flames to spread rapidly, he said.
“The minute that stuff gets going - because of the resins in it - it’s gone,” Royals said.
The pickup truck is owned by William Holcomb, also of 154 Barnes Road, police said. Calls to the Holcomb home went unanswered Thursday.
Karsten Strauss can be reached by e-mail at winsted@registercitizen.com.
Okay, I know what it’s like when your sources don’t call you back and you have to do something to fill some space. But interviewing a mechanic about how trucks catch fire? It was irrelevant and disrespectful. In the case of a fatal accident, it’s much better to go with the bare facts than to vamp.
Our paper is running a short blurb this week. There was nothing new to report, in terms of the cause of death or the cause of the accident, so we didn’t report it. We didn’t make up stuff to fill space.
For comparison:
Cause of fatal crash still unknown
LIME ROCK — A 30-year-old Falls Village woman was killed in the early morning hours of Thursday, May 24, when her car struck a bridge abutment and caught fire.
Jacqueline Holcomb of 154 Barnes Road was driving east on Route 112 in a 1983 GMC pickup belonging to her father, William Holcomb, when she veered off the road and struck the abutment of a bridge near the intersection with Furnace Road.
Shortly after midnight, State Police at Troop B in North Canaan received a 911 call about a car on fire. Upon arrival, rescuers found “the vehicle to be engulfed by flames,” according to a written statement on the accident issued by Troop B. A crew from the state Department of Transportation and rescuers from The Lakeville Hose Company also responded.
After rescuers had extinguished the fire, they found Holcomb inside the truck’s cab. She was pronounced dead at the scene. There were no passengers in the vehicle, which sustained extensive front-end damage and was completely destroyed by fire, police said.
The accident remains under investigation.
— Terry Cowgill
It is, of course, difficult to balance the responsiblity to report the news with sensitivity to the people in the news. Journalists are constantly treading a thin line and often have to make quick judgement calls. We have been blasted by the community for publishing pictures of wrecked cars after fatal accidents. We don’t always get it right.
I understand much better now how the family and those involved feel when their tragedies are displayed on the front page. I will certainly never argue against publishing such stories, but I will definitely be more in tune with the need for discretion.
