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Cooperstown Link

To Tragedy Where

20 Died Is Unclear

Times Reports Fatal Limo Headed Here;

Perhaps Cooptoberfest Was Destination

By JIM KEVLIN & LIBBY CUDMORE • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com

COOPERSTOWN –  Cooperstown, and perhaps Brewery Ommegang, are being reported in the national media as the destination of the limousine that crashed Saturday afternoon in Schoharie County, killing the 18 passengers, plus two people standing nearby.

The New York Times is quoting the aunt of a victim who said the riders in the limousine were heading toward a birthday party at “a Cooperstown brewery.”   CNN is reporting the brewery was Ommegang.

However, there are two other breweries in the Cooperstown area, and Eat Drink Cooperstown, the beer-tasting culmination of the fifth annual Cooptoberfest, was also underway that afternoon.

Ommegang team members today were trying to ascertain if that brewery was the destination, according to spokesman Allison Capozza, but by this evening had been unable to do so.   The brewery had closed at 3 p.m. Saturday for a wedding, and the married couple, contacted today, were unable to confirm a connection, she said.

An alternative destination could have been Eat Drink Cooperstown, the beer tasting event that began at 4 p.m. Saturday in the Doubleday Field parking lot, the  culmination of the fifth annual Cooptoberfest fun festival.

“The victims’ names have not been released, but when they are, we will be looking into whether they had tickets,” said Ryan West of Time Square Media, Oneonta, which organized the Eat Drink event in the Doubleday Field parking lot beginning at 4 Saturday afternoon.

Even if the victims did not have tickets, they would have been able to pay $45 at the door to attend the beer-tasting.

“They were being responsible,” said West, a reference to the victims, who were from the Capitol District, and hired the limousine that crashed in Schoharie County early Saturday afternoon. “And we’re heartbroken for this.”

Matt Hazzard, executive director of the Cooperstown Chamber of Commerce, which organizes Coopertoberfest, said in a text he hadn’t heard anything.  Officials at the other local breweries could not be reached this evening.

Mayor Ellen Tillapaugh, en route home from a weekend away, said she had not yet heard about the possible Cooperstown link.  “Our hearts go out to all the families who have lost loved ones in this shocking and horrible accident,” she said.

The accident occurred at the intersection of state routes 30 and 30A in the Town of Schoharie, state police at Latham report.

The stretch limo drove through a stop sign at the intersection and fatally struck two people in the parking lot of the Apple Country Store & Cafe, then slammed into an earthen embankment, according to the Albany Times Union.  All 17 people in the limo were killed.
“This is the most deadly transportation accident in this country since February of 2009,” the newspaper quoted Robert Sumwalt, National Transportation Safety Board, telling reporters at a briefing this afternoon.  That was the Feb. 12, 2009, crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407 in Buffalo, where 50 people died.

Posted

2 Comments

  1. Hey lets make it about our over rated, entitled, hole in the wall town. Who cares where they were going? Its a horrible tragedy for all involved. Get over yourselves *coop*!

  2. SCHOHARIE FATAL : https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/FBI-informant-in-terror-stings-owned-limo-in-13290392.php

    IN SHORT: “ Hussain’s federal legal problems began after the 9/11 terrorist attacks when he was arrested in an FBI fraud investigation that targeted a ring of corrupt translators, state motor vehicle workers and nearly 100 immigrants who had illegally obtained driver’s licenses with help from Hussain.
    At the time, Hussain owned and operated a Getty gas station on South Pearl Street in Albany. He also worked as a translator for the state Department of Motor Vehicles, and had routinely accepted bribes of several hundred dollars each to help immigrants, who in some cases couldn’t drive well, pass written exams they couldn’t understand, according to court records.
    Following his arrest in December 2001, and while facing the prospect of a long prison term and eventual deportation to his native Pakistan, Hussain agreed to become an informant for the FBI. Hussain had emigrated to the U.S. in 1993 and still held a green card at the time he went to work for the FBI, which credited him with helping arrest more than a dozen people, including the people involved in the DMV scandal and a member of an Afghani-based heroin trafficking ring… “

    Unless I miss my guess, it will be found that a blown out rusted brake line or a corroded caliper failed moments before running into that parked Toy-O-Ta as ‘the cause’ of the accident… New York State uses horrendous amounts of corrosive salt & calcium chloride on the roads in winter. Rusting everything that ain’t plastic –or fiberglass

    [ any similarity in the name to the former ‘President’ is merely familial ]

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