Driver still unidentified in fatal Mullica car crash

From the Press of Atlantic City, April 16, 2010-Lee Procida, Staff Writer

On the southern side of Route 30, less than a mile east of Elwood Road, is a place on the shoulder where someone raked the leaves and garbage away, laid brick pavers and woodchips, and left a memorial for Christine Rivera and Belinda Dillihay.

Both Atlantic City women lost their lives there March 31 when a truck swerved across the four-lane highway and collided head-on with their car, killing them and breaking the legs and arm of Dillihay's 13-year-old grandson in the back seat.

More than two weeks later, neither the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office nor the Mullica Township Police Department has released any new information about what, or who, caused the accident.

DNA evidence from the truck may be the key to finding out the second part of that question, Danny Alvarez said. The 24-year-old lives across the street from the accident scene and was one of the first to see the wreck.

He heard what sounded like a gunshot at about 10:20 p.m., walked outside and saw that cars already were backed up in both directions. Someone with a cell phone asked him what his address was in order to call 911, and together they walked up to see what happened.

He said the two front doors of the truck were ajar, and Ottoway Harrison, 29, of Mullica, was sitting in the back seat. Harrison was taken to AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries and later released.

The vehicle was registered to Ethel Harrison, police said, who tax records show lives about two miles west of the accident scene.

No one was home at her house Thursday afternoon when a Press of Atlantic City reporter stopped there.

Alvarez said he has twice talked to the Mullica police about what he saw that day. Last week he said an officer told him they were waiting for DNA tests performed on samples taken from the truck, and then Tuesday he was asked in again.

He told them what he saw as he walked up to the two cars, both on the eastbound side of the road.

"It wasn't a good sight," he said simply.

A few minutes after the crash, a young woman rode up to the scene on a bike.

"Where are they? Where are they?" Alvarez said she kept saying.

He said she then recognized Harrison, yelled out his first name and ran toward him before police pulled her away.

Since Harrison was in the back seat, and because of what the woman yelled, Alvarez said all signs pointed to two other people being in the truck before the accident happened.

The police taped off the entire roadway; a small strip of the yellow tape still hung from the bush next to Alvarez's home Thursday.

Fred and Pat Traettino were driving home to Hammonton the night of the accident and got detoured around the scene. They returned Thursday to look at the memorial, which still had scraps of plastic and glass left from the collision.

They debated in their car what could have happened, saying they travel that way often and consider it usually a safe road with few cars at that time of night.

"How do you cross all the way across the road and hit someone head-on?" Fred Traettino said.

Alvarez could not answer that question, and said none of the handful of neighbors there could, either. Some were asleep, others were not home and another is elderly and did not leave her home.

Police are still trying to determine who else was in the truck and find where they are now. Authorities would not say whether they have interviewed the Harrisons yet to get those answers.

"I hope they catch them," Alvarez said. "I think it's real sickening what happened."