SCOTTSBURG, Ind. — Ketting Peck first saw that one of her friends had been killed in the deadly crash in Scottsburg, Indiana Friday morning. Then she learned it wasn't just one - but three of her friends.
"I couldn't do it. I started screaming into my pillow," she said. "I lost it completely. Next thing you know, I was calling up my grandma and I was telling my grandma, 'Hey, you need to pray for these families.'"
Wanda Brown, 22, Jeremiah Akers, 18, Christopher Dry, 18, Elizabeth Wagner, 20, and Sarah Starling, 16, died in the crash early Friday morning when the SUV they were riding in went off North Main Street in Scottsburg and rolled several times into the field off the road. Two other people were also injured in the crash.
"Yeah, I do believe God took them a little too soon," Peck said. "Jeremiah and Chris, they were someone's son, brother, grandson, uncle, nephew, all that. I know Wanda was an aunt. She was a daughter. She was a sister."
Peck said she went to Scottsburg High School with Wanda Brown and remembered her outgoing and caring personality.
"She was just that kind of person," she said. "If you needed a friend, she had your back at that point. She had your back. She would listen to you."
Ketting said she grew up with Jeremiah as their grandparents lived in the same neighborhood in Deputy, Indiana.
"Your first impression, you love him," she said. "You'd sit there and still be talking about him an hour later after you met him."
But Ketting said she really got to know Jeremiah and Chris at a church youth group.
"Chris's heart was huge," she said. "I think it was a little too big for his chest though. He was a very outgoing individual."