5 family members die in single-car crash

By Brian McNeill

Published: May 18, 2008

Five family members were killed early Sunday in a crash that ranks among Central Virginia’s deadliest single-vehicle accidents in recent memory.

At around 12:30 a.m. Joseph Alfred Scruggs, a 36-year-old truck driver from Huntersville, N.C., was speeding along a twisty Bremo Bluff road in a rented 2008 Mazda 6 that was filled with his relatives from Fluvanna County.

The car failed to negotiate a sharp curve on Route 656 and flew off the road into an embankment. It then rolled over and landed in the middle of a shallow creek.

Investigators believe that three of the car’s occupants were killed immediately. Two others managed to crawl out of the upside-down Mazda but died a short distance away. One was found partially submerged in the water.

Along with Scruggs, the victims included Larry Jermaine Jones, 25, of Palymra, and Bremo Bluff residents Carlton Eugene Washington, 47; Joseph Ross, 49; and Jason L. Ross, 27, according to Sgt. David Cooper of the Virginia State Police.

It appears that the car’s occupants were intoxicated at the time of the crash, Cooper said.

None of the five victims was wearing a seatbelt.

“Speed, alcohol and no seatbelts,” Cooper said. “You put those three factors together? Not good at all.”

The death toll is unusually high for a car crash, but especially for a single-car crash, Cooper said.

“One, two, sometimes three dead? You see that every now and then,” he said. “But five? That’s the most I can recall ever happening.”

An employee headed to work at the Bremo Bluff Station, a power plant overlooking the James River, discovered the five bodies at around 6 a.m. Sunday.

Bremo resident Gracie Washington lived next door to Carlton Washington. They are distantly related.

“I know all of them,” she said. “It’s shocking. It really is.”

She described Carlton Washington as a “nice boy.” “As far as I knew, he never got into any trouble or anything before,” she said.

Joseph Ross worked as a mechanic and was cousins with Jason Ross. “[Jason] was just a fun person,” said Lisa Washington, a Charlottesville resident who is another cousin of the victims.

Carlton Washington worked odd jobs and helped out his neighbors with projects, Lisa Washington said.

“They was all loving people,” she said. “I’ll remember the good times I had with them. A lot of laughter.”