NEW YORK CRASH | Victim texted sister as she got into limo

SCHOHARIE, N.Y. (AP) — The Latest on a limousine crash in upstate New York that killed 20 people:

1:20 p.m.

The sister of a woman killed in a limousine crash in upstate New York says her heart is “sunken” and she’s in a “place where I’ve never felt this type of pain before.”

Karina Halse visited the crash site Monday in Schoharie and talked about her 26-year-old sister, Amanda Halse, who she said was in the limo with her boyfriend, Patrick Cushing. Halse said her sister was a waitress at Shaker Point in Watervliet, and that she and Patrick “were two peas in a pod.”

The sisters were texting Saturday as Amanda Halse got into the limo, bound for a birthday party. But before Amanda Halse received her sister’s reply, she died in the crash.

Two pedestrians and 18 occupants of the limousine all died, including four sisters.

12:40 p.m.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says a limousine involved in a crash that killed 20 people in upstate New York had failed a state inspection and should not have been on the road.

He said Monday in Manhattan the vehicle had been inspected by the state’s transportation department just last month.

Cuomo also said the driver didn’t have the appropriate license and the stretch limo had been rebuilt in a way that violated federal law.

He said the company, Prestige Limousine, “has a lot to answer for.”

Calls to the limousine company rang unanswered Monday.

The crash Saturday in the town of Schoharie killed two pedestrians and 18 occupants of a limousine, including four sisters. Relatives said the group was headed to a birthday party.

11:04 a.m.

The site of a devastating accident that killed two pedestrians and 18 occupants of a limousine headed to a birthday party, including four sisters, is a known danger spot that has long worried locals, according to a manager of the store that sits at the intersection where the accident happened.

The intersection had been redone in 2008 because of a fatal accident there, said Jessica Kirby, managing director of the Apple Barrel Country Store and Cafe, which is an institution in Schoharie and among the legions of leaf-peepers who take to the roads of upstate New York each autumn.

Since the reconstruction, three tractor-trailers have run through the same stop sign authorities said the limo blew and into a field behind her business, she said. Officials worked with the state to outlaw heavy trucks, she said, but there are still accidents.

And now this.

“More accidents than I can count,” she said in an email. “We have been asking for something to be done for years.”

Gov. Andrew Cuomo released a statement Sunday saying he has “directed state agencies to provide every resource necessary to aid in this investigation and determine what led to this tragedy.”

Autopsies were being performed, including on the driver to see if drugs were alcohol were a factor. Authorities didn’t say whether the limo occupants were wearing seat belts, give the speed of the limo or speculate what caused the limo to run the stop sign and slam into a parked SUV.

Relatives said the limousine was carrying four sisters and their friends to a 30th birthday celebration for the youngest.

“They did the responsible thing getting a limo so they wouldn’t have to drive anywhere,” their aunt, Barbara Douglas, said Sunday. She did not want to name them publicly but added: “They were wonderful girls. They’d do anything for you and they were very close to each other and they loved their family.”

Valerie Abeling, the aunt of victim Erin Vertucci, said her 34-year-old niece and her niece’s new husband, 30-year-old Shane McGowan, were victims.

“She was a beautiful, sweet soul; he was, too, they were very sweet,” Abeling said. “They were two very young, beautiful people” who “had everything going for them.”

The 2001 Ford Excursion limousine was traveling southwest on Route 30 in Schoharie, about 170 miles (270 kilometers) north of New York City when it failed to stop at a T-junction with state Route 30A, state police said. It went across the road and hit an unoccupied SUV parked at the Apple Barrel Country Store and two pedestrians.

The crash appeared to be the deadliest land-vehicle accident in the U.S. since a bus ferrying nursing home patients away from Hurricane Rita caught fire in Texas 2005, killing 23.