Pickup Kills 3 Girl Scouts, Adult Picking Up Trash

It's another hard-to-fathom road accident involving kids. A pickup truck in rural Wisconsin veered off the road Saturday morning and struck a group of Girl Scouts and their chaperones who were picking up trash, reports the NBC News. Three fourth-graders and one adult woman were killed, and a fourth girl remains in critical condition, reports the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Police say the driver fled but later surrendered. He has been identified as Colton Treu, 21, of Chippewa Falls, and Treu faces four counts of homicide through negligent use of a vehicle.

Police aren't sure what caused the accident. They say Treu's black Ford F-150 came over a hill, crossed a lane, swerved into a ditch, and struck the girls, who were wearing bright safety vests. "The area is not an unsafe area," says a sergeant with the Lake Hallie Police Department, about 95 miles east of Minneapolis, per the AP. But a local resident disagrees. “It’s dangerous,” he tells the Star-Tribune of that stretch. “People come flying over the hill.” (Last week, a spate of accidents occurred at a near school bus stops.)