A 68-year-old Trumbull resident died in a six-car accident in East Haven over the Fourth of July weekend.
Trooper Kelly Grant, public information office for Connecticut State Police, confirmed the death of Adriana Catana, 68, in a report sent to The Times on Tuesday, July 5.
The accident happened at 11:08 a.m. Saturday, July 2, between exits 51 and 53 in the northbound lane of I-95, just beyond the Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge.
The report said that nine passengers were transported to nearby hospital with various injuries, including four of Catana’s family members — all of whom live on Columbine Drive in Trumbull.
State police said Catana was seated in the middle position in the back of the vehicle when the collision happened. She sustained fatal injuries when the vehicle struck a cement barrier on the right shoulder of the highway.
Reports added that the East Haven Fire Department had to extricate five people from the heavily damaged 2014 Toyota Venza.
Octavia Catana, 48, was driving the vehicle and Florin Catana, 47, was in the passenger seat, the report added. Mihai Catana, 20, and a 17-year-old Trumbull resident who was not identified by police were seated behind the driver and passenger’s seat, respectively. All four escaped the crash with non-life-threatening injuries, Grant said.
According to state police, all six vehicles were traveling in the center lane — approximately 100-feet south of the exit 51 entrance ramp — before slowing for heavy traffic ahead.
A truck driver from Brighton, Mass., struck the Catana’s vehicle from behind, causing a chain-reaction accident, Trooper Grant said.
State police said the 64-year-old truck driver, who was operating a 2008 Kenworth W900, has not been arrested on any charges. He was not transported to the hospital.
Four cars in front
The car in front of the Catana’s vehicle — the fourth vehicle listed in the report — was filled with five passengers from Great Neck, N.J. Grant said all of the passengers in that vehicle were transported to a nearby hospital to be treated for non-life-threatening injuries.
The three cars in front contained a total of six additional people, none of whom received injuries from the crash’s impact, Grant said.
All six vehicles were towed, the report said, and the accident is still under investigation.
The accident created heavy traffic Saturday from Milford to East Haven as the three northbound lanes were shut down to clear the wreckage.
Despite the lanes reopening in the middle of the afternoon, the state Department of Transportation announced that there was more than nine miles of congestion between Orange and East Haven.