BRANDON — A head-on collision Sunday evening on Route 7 killed a 61-year-old Sunderland man, one of his 15-year-old foster children and sent six other people, including four children and teenagers, to the hospital with serious injuries, according to Brandon Police and witnesses at the scene.

Brandon Police Lt. Rod Pulsifer said Rod Davis, the driver behind the wheel of the brown sedan in the crash, was pronounced dead at the scene. His 49-year-old wife Darryl Davis was seriously injured and taken by DHART medical helicopter to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire. A spokeswoman at the hospital said she could not release any information about Darryl Davis or her condition.

Police said they could not identify the 15-year-old girl who died or any of her siblings.
However, police said the deceased girl's 15-year-old twin sister was also injured in the crash along with a 13-year-old, a 14-year-old and a 9-year-old who were traveling with Rod and Darryl Davis.

Pulsifer said the children in the family were under foster care. Following the accident, he said they were turned over to the state Department of Children and Family Services.

David Rondeau, 28, of Readsboro, was driving a Dodge truck, which was the other vehicle in the collision. Rondeau was taken to Rutland Regional Medical Center where he was treated and released.

The cause of the crash is still under investigation. An autopsy of the car's driver is scheduled for today, Pulsifer said.

Police, fire and rescue crews were called to a stretch of highway about 2 miles north of town at about 6:30 p.m. Police and firefighters remained at the scene for at least three hours, detouring traffic around the crash site, as accident investigators and Rutland County State's Attorney James Mongeon surveyed the scene.

Witnesses who assisted the victims said the crash occurred when a brown sedan traveling south crossed the yellow line and collided with a silver Dodge pickup traveling north.

"There was nothing in the road or anything like that," said witness Paul Kirby. "We could clearly see the car crossed the yellow line and slammed into him."

Kirby of Winooski and two of his friends were heading north on their motorcycles returning from a daylong ride. Kirby and one of his friends managed to brake before colliding with the other two wrecks. The third motorcycle left a 100-foot-long skid mark in the roadway before coming to rest in between the sedan and the truck, both of which crumpled on impact.

Kirby said he and his friends ran first to the car where they found a woman unconscious and injured in the front seat and a man dead behind the wheel. He said he tried to comfort the injured children in the backseat.

"We stayed by the car to make sure they were okay and to talk to them," he said. "But we didn't take them out of the car even though they wanted us to. We were worried we might do more harm than good."

The man driving the truck — later identified by police as Rondeau — managed to climb out the window on his own — a feat that surprised Kirby and his friends given both the condition of the truck and the man.

The front end of the truck was pushed in by the impact, compressing the cab and the driver's side window into a small sliver of space. The man who crawled out of the ruin was badly injured and he appeared to be in shock, Kirby said.

Rondeau and four of the children were all taken to Rutland Regional Medical Center by ambulance. Pulsifer said DHART medical helicopters were used to transport the woman and one of the children to the hospital. A third DHART helicopter also responded but was not at the scene.

As of 9 p.m., the wrecked vehicles remained in the road as investigators took pictures of the scene. A large tarp covered the sedan where the body of the deceased man remained.

Strewn around the scene were items such as pillows and a large car-top container that suggested the carload of people were on a trip — a conclusion that Pulsifer said he was looking into as well.

brent.curtis@rutlandherald.com