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Sister visits site of fatal accident
By Joe Gorman
and Graig Graziosi
CAMPBELL
Rebecca Pickett couldn’t help herself.
She picked up the glass in the road left over from the sport utility vehicle of her brother, Paul Michael Pickett, which crashed Thursday morning at Sixth Street and Wilson Avenue, killing him and his son, Marcus, and seriously injuring his daughter, Leena.
She sifted the glass through her fingers while crying.
She knelt down and rubbed the spot in the road where the car’s fluids had gushed out, and held her hand over her face and sobbed uncontrollably as traffic roared by.
“I had to see what this Sixth Street looks like,” she said through tears.
Troopers with the Canfield Post of the Ohio State Highway Patrol said in a news release that Paul Michael Pickett, 41, was driving a Jeep Wrangler southwest on Sixth Street about 7:30 a.m. when it went off the side of the road, hit an embankment, went airborne and rolled several times on its side before coming to a stop. The post said the accident remains under investigation.
Marcus Pickett, 11, also died at the scene. Leena Pickettt, 12, was taken to St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital. The patrol said her injuries are not life-threatening.
The two children are students in the Lowellville school district. Schools Superintendent Eugene Thomas said the district was saddened to learn of the accident. He said the children are excellent students.
“He’s [Marcus] a great kid,” Thomas said. “The whole family is fantastic.”
Rebecca Pickett said the children were everything to her brother. She said he enrolled them in Lowellville schools because he was impressed by the district and wanted his children to learn there.
“He loved his kids,” she said. “He was trying to get them a good education.”
Both children participate in sports and school events, and both are good students, Rebecca Pickett said.
“The kids are in so many activities,” she said. “They’re very smart kids. My brother is so proud of them.”
Rebecca Pickett said her brother loved the children so much that she believes he is heartbroken even in death that his son died and his daughter was injured.
“I know my brother is distraught,” she said. “He [Marcus] was the smartest boy.”
The school district has made counselors available to students to help cope with the accident.
“Thank God situations like this don’t happen often,” Thomas said. “There’s no scripted way to handle any of these situations. Every one is unique and individual. We have to take it day by day to support our teachers, students, the community and especially any families involved with any tragic loss like this.”