Ohio woman survives Pennsylvania car accident that kills 6

By DAVID N. GOODMAN

Associated Press Writer

DETROIT (AP) -- A minivan carrying a group of Indian computer programmers and their wives to a Niagara Falls vacation flipped and crashed in western Pennsylvania, killing six of seven people on board, officials say.

The van was about three miles inside Pennsylvania near the Ohio border at about 4 p.m. Saturday when it crossed a median on Interstate 90 and began flipping and rolling, coming to rest on its roof, police said.

It was then struck by a westbound car driven by Melanie Cesnick, 25, of Avon Lake, Ohio, police said. She was treated at a hospital and released Saturday night, Pennsylvania state police Cpl. Kevin Havern said.

There was no apparent cause of the crash, which killed driver Kaushik Deb, 26, of Troy, Mich., and five of his six passengers -- Manoj Jharia, 35; Mili Jharia, 28; Nitin Agarwal, 29; Swati Agarwal, 25; and Shubham Choudory, 24.

The sole survivor in the minivan, Nitin Gupta, 28, was sitting in the front passenger seat, Havern said. He was also treated and released from a hospital Saturday.

Calls to a Farmington Hills, Mich., telephone listing for Gupta were not answered Sunday evening.

Deb, Choudory, Manoj Jharia and Nitin Agarwal worked as software writers for Troy-based Syntel Inc., company official Jonathan James said. The trip was a personal vacation and not a company sponsored excursion or business trip, he said.

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Associated Press writer Jim Irwin contributed to this report.