The crash victims were 20-year-old Michael Todd Barch Jr. of Clearcreek Twp. and 19-year-old Karys Rose Seipel of Springboro. Barch was a 2021 Springboro grad who had just completed his second year at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee, and Seipel was a 2022 Springboro grad who just finished her freshman year at Miami University in Oxford, according to their obituaries and the Warren County Prosecutor’s Office.
The crash happened around 11:35 p.m. May 20, 2023, at the intersection of Ohio 48 and Lytle-Five Points Road.
Huelsman was traveling at 107 mph when she ran a red light in a 2022 Kia Telluride and struck a 2016 Chevrolet Malibu driven by Barch that was headed west on Lytle-Five Points Road. The impact forced both vehicles to go off the side of the road. The Chevrolet was pushed 250 feet into a telephone pole, where it caught fire, according to a report filed by the Ohio State Highway Patrol.
Barch and his passenger, Seipel, were pronounced dead at the scene.
“Our office handles many homicide cases, but as a parent of children basically the same age, this tragedy hits particularly close to home,” Warren County Prosecutor David Fornshell said after the guilty verdict. “It’s infuriating that because of Huelsman’s reckless decision that night, a young man and a young woman with tremendously bright futures did not return home to the families that loved them so much.”
Huelsman suffered serious injuries and was taken by ambulance to Kettering Health Main Campus, the crash report stated.
In convicting Huelsman of the charges, Tepe rejected the defense’s claim that Huelsman was not guilty by reason of insanity, the prosecutor’s office said.
The intersection where the crash happened will have a single-lane roundabout, which will be built in 2028 at an estimated cost of $3.66 million, according to the Ohio Department of Transportation.
When roundabouts replace an intersection with traffic signals, Federal Highway Administration studies show a reduction in crashes overall by 48% and a nearly 80% drop in serious injury and deadly crashes.
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