Upstate NY limo crash killed 4 sisters and their husbands, aunt says

Four upstate sisters out celebrating the youngest one’s birthday with three of their husbands were among 20 people killed when their limo blew through a stop sign and crashed, grieving family said Sunday.

“One just got married, and that’s what this was — her new husband was giving her a surprise birthday party,” the sisters’ aunt, Barbara Douglas, said in a quavering voice as her eyes filled with tears while visiting the scene of the wreck.

Their brother, Tom King, 35, said his four sisters “were very tight.”

“They were the Four Musketeers,’’ he told The Post, adding that his parents “are in shock.”

“We all are what’s left. There was seven of us — five sisters and two brothers,” he said outside his parents’ ranch-style home in rural Amsterdam, NY.

The tragedy — the nation’s worst transportation disaster in nearly a decade — unfolded shortly before 2 p.m. Saturday in Schoharie, about 35 miles west of Albany.

Amy Dunlop-Johnson, who is related to some of the victims, told CBS News that the group had been visiting wineries in the area, and another family’s aunt, Valerie Abeling, told the Washington Post that the group was headed to a brewery in Cooperstown.

Abeling, whose daughter was invited on the excursion but didn’t go, said her daughter told her the group rented “some kind of bus” that broke down and was replaced by the stretch limo. Abeling’s daughter had been texting with one of the victims before the crash.

The replacement limo, which was carrying 18 people including the driver, ran the stop sign at more than 60 mph, according to a witness, and careened into the packed parking lot of a cafe popular with autumn leaf-peepers.

The out-of-control vehicle struck a parked 2015 Toyota Highlander SUV that fatally mowed down two bystanders, State Police First Deputy Superintendent Chris Fiore said during an afternoon news conference.

The white limo then hurtled across a patch of lawn outside the Apple Barrel Country Store & Cafe before smashing into a small stand of trees on the far side of a 4-foot drainage ditch.

The crash killed all of the limo’s 18 occupants, Fiore said.

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Fiore said the customized 2001 Ford Excursion “failed to stop” while heading southwest on Route 30 and before crossing the T-bone intersection with Route 30A.

That section of Route 30 declines steeply for about half a mile toward Route 30A, and the road Sunday had numerous skid marks leading up to and past a stop sign before the intersection.

“That limo was coming down that hill probably over 60 mph,” Apple Barrel manager Jessica Kirby, 36, told the New York Times.

Store worker Anthony Tenace, 15, said he “was helping people find stuff in the back when a woman came in screaming, ‘Call 911! Call 911!’ ”

“I saw the first responders bringing people out, putting them on stretchers and covering them with blankets,” said Tenace, a sophomore at Duanesburg High School.

The four sisters killed in the crash were identified by their aunt as Abigail Jackson, Mary Dyson, Allison King and Amy Steenburg.

Douglas said they ranged in age from 30 to 35, noting: “It was just my youngest niece’s birthday.”

“They were beautiful girls, full of life. They had their whole lives ahead of them,” she said.

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“One of them had two children. One of them had one child.”

King said his dead sisters “were all just starting out — married and successful.”

King said State Police visited his parents Saturday night and told them “everything” but added: “There are still a lot of unanswered questions.”

Douglas said her brother, the sisters’ father, “told me that when [the police] called him, they didn’t know if the brakes went out or what, but they were all dead.”

The youngest sister, Steenburg, was a newlywed, having just married Axel Steenburg on June 30, according to a posting on wedding website TheKnot.com.

“I just wanted to say Axel Steenburg I love you more than words can say!” Amy wrote in her final Facebook post, dated Wednesday.

All three of Amy’s dead sisters were members of her wedding party, with Allison King serving as maid of honor and the others as bridesmaids.

Thomas King said Axel’s older brother, Rich, who was the best man, also was among those killed Sunday.

Jackson’s husband, Adam Jackson, who was a groomsman, died in the wreck, too, according to a GoFundMe page set up to raise money for their kids, Archer, 4, and Elle, 16 months.

Dyson’s husband was also killed, said an aunt, who added, “I found out about this on my phone, on Facebook.

“It’s awful. It was too many. Too many,” said the aunt, also named Mary Dyson.

Another couple who died in the limo — Shane and Erin McGowan — were also newlyweds who got married in June, according to posts on social media.

“Our family will never be the same after the tragic deaths of Our Son Shane and Daughter Erin,” Shane’s mom, Susan Minicki McGowan, wrote on Facebook.

Abeling said Erin’s cousin, Patrick Cushing, was also killed.

Fiore of the State Police wouldn’t identify the limo’s owner or say if the passengers were wearing seatbelts, which he said were legally required only for the driver and any front-seat passengers.

Chairman Robert Sumwalt of the National Transportation Safety Board said a team of investigators was dispatched to the scene and would spend about five days looking into the cause of the crash.

He called it “the most deadly transportation accident in the country since February 2009,” when a Colgan Air plane crashed into a house outside Buffalo, killing all 49 people onboard and one person on the ground.

“Twenty fatalities is just horrific,” Sumwalt said.

Saturday’s incident echoed the July 2015 crash in which four women were killed while leaving a Long Island winery in a stretch limo that was making a U-turn when it was struck broadside by a pickup truck.

Both drivers were indicted, with the pickup driver, Steven Romero, cutting a no-jail plea bargain to a charge of driving while ability impaired after admitting he had “a few beers” before the collision.

The limo driver, Carlos Pino, was charged with criminally negligent homicide for making the U-turn on Route 48 in Suffolk County, but the case against him was dismissed by a judge whose ruling was upheld on appeal in June.

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