5 teenagers killed by wrong-way driver

It was an unspeakable nightmare: A driver speeding the wrong way on Interstate 89 slammed into an oncoming car, killing the five teenagers in the vehicle.

All five lived in the Harwood Union School District; four went to Harwood Union High School and one went to Kimball Union Academy in Meriden, N.H.

The victims were Eli Brookens, 16 of Waterbury; Mary Harris, 16, and Cyrus Zschau, 16, both of of Moretown; and Janie Cozzi, 15, and Liam Hale, 16, both of Fayston. Cozzi was a sophomore at Kimball Union; the other four were juniors at Harwood.

The five were coming home from a concert at Higher Ground in South Burlington just before midnight on Saturday.

In the moments before the crash, Vermont State Police had received multiple 911 calls about a pickup truck driving the wrong way in the southbound lane of I-89 in Bolton.

Richmond, Williston and Vermont State Police raced to intercept the pickup, but before they got there, the 2012 Toyota Tacoma slammed head-on into a Volkswagen Jetta in Williston, killing the five students.

Williston Police Officer Eric Shepard was the first to arrive on scene. There was debris everywhere, and the Jetta was engulfed in flames in the median. Shepard grabbed a fire extinguisher and ran towards the burning car; he was able to pull one girl out of the car, then had to focus on quelling the flames.

Many people were on the highway that night — some headed home, like the students, others just passing through. Many of them stopped to help, including Paul Swann, an Uber driver from Waterbury who almost hit the truck, which was dark-colored and had no lights on.

“There was debris everywhere, there were flames,” Swann told WCAX. “I heard people screaming ‘What the hell is going on?’ and I just heard people yelling and screaming over by the area where the impact was.”

Swann was with Shepard when the officer realized his police cruiser, a 2015 Ford Explorer SUV, was rolling south on I-89, with a man —later identified as Steven Bourgoin — sitting in the driver’s seat.

“As he and I were heading back up the embankment, his vehicle started to move forward and he started yelling, ‘Who’s, who’s taking my cruiser? Stop!’” Swann said. “Then the vehicle proceeded to rather slowly accelerate away from the scene and it was going past all the vehicles that were stopped and then accelerated off.”

According to a police affidavit, Shepard radioed dispatchers to report his cruiser had been stolen, then went back to helping the accident victims.

“A minute or two later, a second Williston officer arrived in a (Dodge) Charger and very quickly took off southbound after the stolen cruiser,” Swann said in a sworn statement. “Several minutes later, (Shepard) began shouting frantically for everyone to get off the highway immediately.”

Bourgoin had turned around and was again headed the wrong way on the interstate, back toward the accident.

The stolen police cruiser struck the Tacoma that had been involved in the first crash at full speed, which threw the cruiser sideways into a line of cars and people who had stopped to help.

“It was terrifying and I had frozen up, having almost been hit myself by the stolen cruiser,” Swann told detectives after the crash.

Shepard said it did not appear that Bourgoin hit the brakes on the cruiser, and reported in his affidavit that the engine RPMs “sounded as if they were running at max.”

Bourgoin was hurled out of the driver’s side of the stolen cruiser.

Bourgoin, being treated for multiple injuries at the University of Vermont Medical Center, was upgraded Tuesday from critical to serious condition.

Multiple bystanders were injured in the second crash, but none seriously; they were taken to the UVM Medical Center for treatment. Among them was Arthur George, 47, of Waterbury.