It was emotional pleas to improve a dangerous intersection in Bethesda, Maryland, during a meeting to talk about the location where three family members were killed and a fourth was seriously injured in a car crash.
Changing the intersection on River Road near Pyle Road has been a topic through years of crashes and near misses. A terrible crash at that spot on Feb. 27 killed Thomas Michael Buarque De Macedo, a Walt Whitman High School senior, and his parents, Michael and Allesandra Buarque De Macedo.
Helena Buarque De Macedo, a Walt Whitman sophomore, barely survived the crash that killed her family.
"We predicted this would likely happen,” said community activist Richard Boltuck. “Every day it didn’t happen, we felt like we were lucky. We were fortunate. Maybe, we were even wrong. But eventually, our fears proven to be well-founded."
The discussion of options, including closing Pyle Road and installing a traffic signal, grew emotional with the need to get it right and to do it soon to prevent another family tragedy.
“In other parts of Montgomery County, we have blinking lights. We have speed cameras. We have people making sure people stop when little kids are in the intersections,” said resident Don Jodrey. “It doesn’t take that much money to do a good solution to force people to slow down.”
The family's surviving child and her uncle will be at Walt Whitman's graduation on Wednesday to accept Thomas Buarque De Macedo 's diploma, and a certificate from Gov. Larry Hogan acknowledging he was in the top 5 percent of students, academically, in the state of Maryland.
