Teen dies in Woodbridge wreck; two injured

A 15-year-old boy was killed and two other youths injured when the compact car that they were riding in slammed into a parked 4-ton wrecker on the side of Elm Farm Road in Woodbridge on Monday evening.

The 15-year-old, identified by the survivors of the crash as Andrew, was sitting on the passenger side of the back seat when the late-model, red Hyundai plowed into the left side of the Nissan tow truck, said Prince William County police Sgt. Bud Delaney. Police would not identify the victims, pending notification of the victims’ relatives.

Judy Gordon was the first person to the car after the accident and said that the 15-year-old had died instantly.

“He had a hole in the back of his head the size of two fists,” said Gordon, of Elm Farm Road. “He wasn’t breathing. He looked like a ghost. His pupils were completely white.”

Gordon said that she smelled gas and decided to pull the victims out of the compressed car. However, she was unable to move the 15-year-old boy.

“I feel so bad that I couldn’t help that other boy, but there was nothing I could do,” Gordon said.

Although the police will not give a formal report until today, witnesses to the crash said that the car was speeding down the darkened road. The driver, who was taken to Potomac Hospital in Woodbridge and is expected to live, tried to pass a green pickup on the left, although he was in a no-passing zone, Gordon said.

During the pass, the car approached a curve to the right; the driver swerved too far to the left and overcompensated, pulling the Hyundai off the road and into the wrecker, Gordon said.

The boy sitting in the passenger seat was taken by helicopter to Inova Fairfax Hospital. He emerged from the car bleeding with a large knot on the back of his head but is expected to live.

Gordon, who stayed with the boys until ambulances arrived, said the survivors were in such shock that they forgot that Andrew was even in the back seat.

“They were still in the car and their music was so loud that I could hardly hear them,” Gordon said. “And then, all the driver kept saying was that his mom was going to be upset about the car. When I asked him about his friend in the back seat, he kept saying, ‘Oh my God. Oh my God. Andrew. Andrew.’ “

The Hyundai was so demolished that Gordon first thought it was a convertible.

Judy Ohl, whose husband, Bill, drives the wrecker, said the vehicle was parked there legally.

Staff writer Adam H. Beasley can be reached at (703) 878-8073.