May 15, 2017 2 min read

State police said a driver failed to properly heed a stop sign before striking the side of a van carrying four people at a Somerset Township intersection Sunday.

Five people were taken to area hospitals – including two by helicopter – following the crash at the junction of Route 136 and Brownlee Road.

Police said a 2011 Chevrolet Cruze driven by Laverne Pollock, 68, was traveling north on Brownlee Road shortly after 3 p.m. when it “failed to make an appropriate stop for a stop sign and proceeded into the intersection.” The car struck the rear driver’s side of a 2016 Dodge Grand Caravan operated by Lenora Marchionda, 19, who was crossing the intersection from the westbound lane of Route 136.

The van went into a spin, flipped over and slid on its roof into a guardrail at the northwestern corner of the intersection.

The car Pollock was driving, meanwhile, spun halfway around and struck a third vehicle – a 2014 Jeep Wrangler whose driver, 46-year-old Holliann Meighen, was stopped in the southbound lane of Brownlee Road – before it came to rest in the middle of the intersection.

Drivers and passengers were able to exit all three vehicles on their own.

Amy Holmes, 40, and two unidentified children were in the van with Marchionda, police said. Two of the occupants of that vehicle were taken to trauma centers in Pittsburgh, and two others plus Pollock were taken by ambulance to local hospitals.

Meighen and two children who were with her in the Jeep, which police said sustained “cosmetic damage,” were observed and released.