2 Youngstown traffic crashes claim 3 lives

YOUNGSTOWN

Police are investigating three traffic fatalities in two separate parts of town Thursday morning.

About 1:30 a.m., two people died after a car they were riding in collided with the rear of a semi in the 800 block of Lansdowne Boulevard on the East Side.

Officer Morris Lee of the department’s Accident Investigation Unit said the semi fled after the accident. The car, he said, burst into flames and the two people who died were burned so badly authorities do not know their identifications yet.

A third person in the car was also badly burned and is being treated at the burn unit at Akron Children’s Hospital.

Lee said charges could be filed against the driver of the semi for leaving the scene of an accident. Lee said semis are not allowed on Lansdowne Boulevard, but he said at that hour on a holiday it would be hard for an officer to catch someone driving a semi. He also said there are a lot of truck drivers in that section of the East Side as well.

Later, about 9 a.m., police were called to the 2100 block of Poland Avenue on the lower South Side where they found a man dead outside his pickup truck at Allied Erecting.

Lee said it appeared the truck had gone off the road and collided with a pile of scrap metal. He said police think the accident happened several hours before it was called in. A passerby noticed the wreck and called the police.

Reports said Robert Campy Jr., 24, of Boardman, was thrown from his pickup truck, which went through a fence and over a wall.

The cause of both accidents is under investigation.