5 Kids Killed in Fiery New York Crash Were Likely Panhandling Before
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Surveillance video from a shopping center has provided new insight into what a group of kids were doing so far from home just hours before five of them died in a fiery car crash in New York’s Westchester County. Footage suggests the group spent their final hours asking shoppers in New Jersey for money, local news channel WFSB reported, adding that the kids approached people “in a way that suggested they were panhandling.” It’s the first insight into what the kids—aged 17, 16, 12, 11, 9 and 8—were doing on an expressway around midnight so far from their homes in Connecticut. Cops say five of the six, who were all related, died on March 12 when the car’s driver, an unlicensed 16-year-old, failed to make a turn and crashed into a tree off the Hutchinson River Parkway, bursting the rental car into flames. Only 9-year-old Abraham Billips survived, authorities said, and the kids’ family remains under investigation with the Connecticut Department of Children and Families.