EPPING, N.H. — Authorities say a retired police sergeant and his wife were killed in a New Hampshire highway crash involving a driver who was going the wrong way.
Police said a pickup truck traveling eastbound on the westbound side of Route 101 in Epping late Thursday crashed into a westbound car. Another westbound driver unable to see the crash ran into the pickup.
The car hit by the pickup was driven by 58-year-old John Johnson, a sergeant who recently retired after nearly four decades with the police department in Townsend, Massachusetts. He and his 57-year-old wife, Heidi Johnson, died. They lived in New Ipswich, New Hampshire.
The pickup driver, 31-year-old Ryan Kittredge, of Derry, was hospitalized with serious injuries.
The driver who crashed into the pickup, 23-year-old Andrew Neeper, of Raymond, suffered non-life-threatening injuries.
NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Amtrak trains are back on track between New York and Connecticut after a downed power wire disrupted rail service in the Northeast for several hours.
Amtrak officials say an overhead wire that powers the trains came down Friday morning near Pelham Bay in the Bronx. It was repaired by the early afternoon. All service between New York and New Haven, Connecticut, was suspended, affecting all Amtrak trains in and out of New England.
Rail service officials did not immediately disclose how the wire came down.
Officials say delays will be diminishing throughout the afternoon.
The problem did not affect Metro-North rail service between New York and New Haven.
Amtrak officials reported the problem at about 9 a.m. and announced it was repaired at about 1:30 p.m.
BOSTON — State transportation officials are eyeing a major reconstruction of a portion of the Massachusetts Turnpike in Boston.
The estimated $1.1 billion project would replace an aging viaduct and put a now-elevated section of the highway at ground level. At the same time, the plan calls for a portion of Soldiers Field Road that is now at ground level would flow over the turnpike on a new viaduct.
The Boston Globe reports the plan would allow for a new train station and development of land owned by Harvard University in the Allston-Brighton neighborhood. Officials say it could also create more green space along the Charles River and give bicyclists and pedestrians more room.
Construction isn’t expected for at least several more years, but it will almost certain cause major traffic disruptions.
BOSTON — A rare 1943 bronze Lincoln penny has sold for more than $200,000 at a Florida auction.
Heritage Auctions says more than 30 people bid on the rare coin Thursday night. Only 10 to 15 of these pennies, mistakenly minted in bronze instead of steel, are believed to exist. They were made at a time when bronze and copper were being saved to fill metal shortages during World War II.
The auction house says Don Lutes, of Pittsfield, found the penny in his pocket as a teenager in 1947 after getting some change at his high school cafeteria, and held onto it ever since.
Lutes died in September. He directed all proceeds from the sale to be donated to the Berkshire Athenaeum at the public library in Pittsfield.
BAR HARBOR, Maine — Verna Bloom, the actress who portrayed the wife of the dean in the movie “Animal House,” has died. She was 80.
Family spokesman Mike Kaplan tells The Hollywood Reporter that Bloom died Wednesday in Bar Harbor, Maine, of complications from dementia.
In the 1978 John Landis film, Bloom played Marion Wormer, who flirted with and had a drunken romp with fraternity president “Otter” Stratton.
She was Clint Eastwood’s lover in “High Plains Drifter” and was Mary in “The Last Temptation of Christ.”
Bloom was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, and graduated from Boston University in 1959.
She is survived by her husband, former film critic and two-time Oscar-nominated screenwriter Jay Cocks, and a son.
From Associated Press