Five people were killed in a wrong-way crash on I-75 North overnight, including the at-fault driver whom police said appears to have been driving while intoxicated.
According to WHIO, the Montgomery County Coroner's Office has released the identification of the people who were killed.
The names include: the suspect driver: James Pohlabeln, 61, of Dayton, Ohio.
The other driver was Kyle Canter, 23, of New Carlisle.
The passengers in Honda CRV included: driver Canter: Earl Miller II, 27, of New Carlisle; Vashti Nicole Brown, 29, of Dayton; Devin Bachmann, 26, of Huber Heights.
Three of the deceased -- Devin Bachmann, Kyle Canter and Earl Miller -- appeared to have been in a band together called CounterFlux. Canter and Miller were guitar players and Bachmann was the singer, according to the band's Facebook page.
The 61-year-old at-fault driver, James Pohlabeln, was released from jail about 33 hours before the fatal crash on I-75.
He was arrested at 2:21 a.m. Thursday for OVI and failure to control at Bell and Fourth streets, according to court records.
He pleaded not guilty and a judge released him on his own recognizance, according to court records. He got out of jail about 7 p.m. Thursday.
Dayton police Sgt. Matt Beavers said a 61-year-old man driving a sedan was driving south in the northbound lanes of I-75 when the sedan crashed head-on into an SUV.
The four people, three men and one woman, were traveling inside the SUV when the crash occurred. All four, along with the driver of the sedan, were pronounced dead at the scene.
Investigators said there were no witnesses to the crash, and the investigation will determine if other factors, such as speed, played a role in the crash.
Witness describes the scene
Chris Dues, 32, of Springfield, Kentucky, said he was driving a semitrailer north on I-75 when he saw a pickup swerve in front of him. Dues said the pickup had to avoid two vehicles that had collided.
Dues pulled over and saw there were multiple people trapped inside. He checked the pulse of one of the passengers in an SUV, but didn’t detect anything.
Dues said the crash likely happened a minute or two before he arrived on the scene.
“It was horrific,” he said. “There was no front end on either of the vehicles. There was an alternator 10 feet from the car, just sitting out in the road. It was crazy.”
Dues was dismayed to learn that five people were killed in the crash. He could not tell how many people were inside the SUV, and he had hoped some occupants had survived.
911 call alerted authorities
Moments before the deadly crash, a motorist called 9-1-1 and reported a wrong-way driver had nearly hit him.
The first call was received by the Montgomery County Regional Dispatch Center at 3:02 a.m.
The motorist told the dispatcher a white four-door sedan was going south in the northbound lanes.
He was unable to get the plate number because he had to veer out of the way, according to the 911 record.
“It was coming right at me. I just pulled over to get out of the way,” the caller told the dispatcher.
One official said the same vehicle was reported going the wrong way on Ohio 4 — southbound in the northbound lanes — prior to the crash.
