‘My parents’ heart is broken’

A fragile blond woman sat hunched over, kneeling in a patch of burnt black pine needles covered with bouquets of roses, long after the other mourners had driven off.

Eight hours before, Lyudmyla Kravchenko’s younger brother Sergey, 25, had been killed in a fiery automobile crash on that spot. Also killed were her best friend Alex Sipko, 25, and Anna Kuznetsova, 16. She sobbed into a handkerchief and choked back tears as she thought of her brother.

He was a saxophone player, Lyudmyla said. “The best.”

Sergey Kravchenko, Sipko, and Kuznetsova died when their car crashed into a tree and caught fire about 1:30 a.m. Wednesday in Mead. The sole survivor, Yelena Peregudova, 16, was ejected from the back seat and taken to a hospital with multiple fractures, according to the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office.

The crash was one of the deadliest Spokane County accidents of the summer, Sheriff’s spokesman Cpl. Dave Reagan said.

Later, on the front steps of her home, Lyudmyla, 27, spoke on behalf of the families of the three killed in the crash.

She said Sergey and Sipko were best friends, so close that people often mistook them for family. Their families lived within blocks of each other in northeast Spokane, and as adults, the two worked for the same construction company in Seattle. The two met when the Kravchenko family moved from Ukraine six years ago.

While Lyudmyla spoke, her cell phone rang. Kuznetsova’s mother was calling to talk about her only child, who turned 16 one month ago.

“For her mom she was the best kid,” Lyudmyla said. “She says she will always be in her heart and her soul every day. Always.”

Lyudmyla struggled to hold back tears as she described her brother, a passionate musician who had been playing since he was 5. He was engaged to be married in September in the same church that will host his funeral on Saturday.

“My parents’ heart is broken,” she said.

Alex Sipko was the oldest of eight children. Lyudmyla translated for Alex’s father, Vladmir Sipko, who said in the last three months their relationship had been “beautiful.”

“Alex was a peaceful person, if people fight, he always got in the middle and broke it up,” Vladmir Sipko said through Lyudmyla. “He supported his family and they feel a really big pain.”

Lyudmyla said losing Alex was as bad as losing her brother.

“I’m from one family, he’s from another, he made us all like family,” she said.

Sgt. Dave VanWormer said the vehicle was northbound on Parksmith Road when the driver lost control of the Oldsmobile on a sharp turn near Peone Road. The car struck a large tree with the driver’s door, spinning the car counterclockwise. The impact jammed the doors, trapping the passengers.

Investigators said speed was a factor, but VanWormer said he did not know who was driving or what may have caused the driver to lose control. Reagan said the results of toxicology reports would not be available for several weeks.

Spokane County Fire District 9 received a dispatch call at 1:22 a.m. and by the time personnel reached the scene seven minutes later the car was fully engulfed in flames, said Deputy Chief Robert Waldren.

Cheryl and David Blair’s back yard is open to Parksmith Road. Cheryl Blair heard the accident, but first thought it was a train on the nearby tracks. When she heard Peregudova screaming, she went outside and saw the car on fire, she said. She called 911 while David Blair tried to free the three trapped passengers.

“We were trying to get the fire out, get them out of there,” David Blair said.

Cheryl Blair said the wedge-shaped intersection just a few yards from their house has always been treacherous.

“They fly through here at 50, 60, 70 miles per hour, day and night, it’s very common,” she said. “They come through here so fast and they don’t yield. There’s been at least six or seven accidents that I know of. We’ve been here for 18 years, I’m sure there’s been many more that I wasn’t even aware of.”

Both Blairs were distraught.

“You ask yourself, ‘What if I got there sooner?’ ‘What if I would have seen it sooner?’ They told us there was nothing we could have done,” Cheryl Blair said. “It was so engulfed in flames by the time I saw it that I don’t think anyone could have saved them.”