An Amish horse-drawn buggy crashed into a car in northwest Michigan on Monday, killing a seven-year-old boy and an 11-year-old girl, The Detroit News reports.
The crash occurred at 8:15 a.m. in Cedar Creek Township, tossing three children from the buggy onto the road. Two of the children were pronounced dead at the scene. The third, a nine-year-old girl, was flown to a Grand Rapids hospital, the Wexford County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
The car was driven by a 48-year-old Manton man who was carrying three passengers, according to Michigan Live. Authorities have not yet released the names of the parties involved.
Michigan currently hosts the sixth-largest Amish population in the United States, according to a study from the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College. The 17,920 person figure represented in the center’s most recent 2022 study is a nearly 5,000-person increase from the 2013 estimate of 12,935.
State Police Sgt. Lou Reed told The Detroit News that buggies and cars often share the road in the area and that “there’s always potential for something catastrophic.”
Similar incidents are all too common in rural and suburban Michigan. State Police numbers show 135 horse-drawn carriage related accidents between 2014 and 2019 in which eight people died, The Detroit News reports.