Bernardston crash kills 2 women; police asking for help

[ Originally published on: Friday, June 22, 2007 ]

BERNARDSTON -- Two young local women were killed and two local men gravely injured when their SUV ripped through a steel guardrail and summersaulted off a road at high speed Wednesday.

One of the dead was a woman named Heather E. Buffum, 21, of Aster Court in Greenfield. The other dead woman was Melissa Duff, 25, of Athol.

Injured in the crash were Daniel Tompkins, 30, of Turners Falls and Jeffrey Blake, 36, of Deerfield, according to Bernardston Police Sgt. James Palmeri.

Thursday night, Tompkins was in critical condition at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester; Blake was at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield in good condition, according to spokespeople at the hospitals.

The crash occurred around 8:20 p.m. Wednesday and resulted in all four of the travelers in the dark red Ford Expedition being thrown from the vehicle.

According to police, the SUV was traveling at an extremely high rate of speed when it slammed head-on into a guardrail by the side of South Street before flipping over and ending up on a railroad track.

Police are looking for anyone who may have seen the vehicle at the Northfield boat ramp between 7 and 8 p.m. on Wednesday night. Anyone with information is asked to call Bernardston Police at: (413) 625-8200.

At midday on Thursday, Bernardston Police Chief Jason E. Bunk said that investigators were still trying to sort out the details of what had happened.

'Clearly, speed was a factor in this,' he said.

Melissa Duff loved the outdoors. She liked to fish and go four-wheeling, said Jaycee Albee, 23, of Charlemont.

Albee, a friend of Duff's, said that she was a good artist and liked to draw.

'We'll miss you,' said Glen Sumner of Charlemont. 'We really will.'

Sumner, 25, went to school with Duff at Mohawk Trail Regional High School in Buckland.

Pam Lively, an aunt of Heather Buffum, said that Buffum has two daughters, Jade, 2ﾽ-years-old, and Linda, who is almost 1.

'She was just well loved,' said Lively.

'We loved Heather and her children,' said a woman sitting outside near where Buffum lived at Leyden Woods on Thursday.

As of Thursday afternoon, police were unable to say whether alcohol was a factor because it was not yet known who was driving the vehicle and no blood chemistry or toxicology reports were available.

When autopsies are done, it usually takes six to eight weeks for toxicology reports to come back on the deceased.

Sgt. Palmeri said on Thursday night that they do not believe that the victims and injured were wearing seat belts at the time of the crash.

A look at the scene shows tire marks on the road leading to a point where the guardrail has been peeled back like a banana skin and foliage growing beside the railroad tracks has been uprooted.

Amanda Abramson of Bernardston was at work Wednesday night at the Town Line Creemies when she heard the crash.

'It sounded like a huge tree landing on a house.

'I was outside, so I went running over there. The car was completely destroyed,' she said.

According to Abramson, a large group of little kids, who were at the ice cream stand on that warm spring evening, followed her to the railroad tracks where the vehicle had come to rest.

'I saw one of the bodies, a woman, so I tried to get them out of there.

'It's the only car accident I've ever seen. It was really devastating,' she said.

The crash was less than 75 yards from the police station.

Support services were held for emergency responders at the Bernardston Fire Department Thursday evening.

 

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