NBCPhiladelphia.com
A car and tow truck collided in Lehigh County, Pa., killing five people. The passenger in the tow truck survived and was taken to the hospital.Five people were killed and another was injured when a tow truck and a car collided Thursday afternoon in eastern Pennsylvania, police said.
State Police Cpl. Mark Rowlands said the car ran a stop sign and was hit by a tow truck on a rural road in Heidelberg Township, about 15 miles outside of Allentown, Pa. All four people in the car – three males and one female – and the man driving the tow truck died in the collision, which happened around 2:35 p.m. Thursday, according to a police press release.
A male passenger in the tow truck suffered non-life threatening injuries and was taken to Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest.
Images of the collision aftermath show the car badly mangled beneath the tow truck, which was hauling a box truck at the time of the crash.
Police said the vehicles crashed into a utility pole, causing more than 200 customers of PPL, a utility provider in Allentown, to lose power.
PPL spokesman Michael Wood told msnbc.com the routine outage allowed rescue crews to remove bodies from the vehicles and clean up downed power lines.
Power was fully restored about six hours after the crash.
A spokesman for the Lehigh County coroner’s office told msnbc.com Friday that officials were still trying to identify victims of the crash and contact their families.
