(Reuters) -U.S. congresswoman Jackie Walorski and two members of her staff were killed in a head-on vehicle collision in Indiana on Wednesday, her office and local police said.
Walorski, a Republican who represented Indiana’s 2nd congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives, was traveling in a vehicle with the two others when another car veered into their lane, the Elkhart County Sheriff’s Office said.
Walorski, 58, died as a result of her injuries, the sheriff’s office said. Walorski’s communications director, Emma Thomson, 27, and Zachery Potts, 28, a district director for the lawmaker, were also killed, it added.
The driver of the other vehicle, 56-year-old Edith Schmucker, was pronounced dead at the scene, it said.
Confirming her death in a statement shared on Twitter by House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, Walorski’s office said: “Dean Swihart, Jackie’s husband, was just informed by the Elkhart County Sheriff’s office that Jackie was killed in a car accident this afternoon.”
It added: “Please keep her family in your thoughts and prayers. We will have no further comment at this time.”
Walorski was a lifelong resident of Indiana, according to her official biography. She served on the House Ways and Means Committee and as the top Republican on the subcommittee on worker and family support.
Prior to her election in 2012 to the House, Walorski served three terms in the Indiana legislature, spent four years as a missionary in Romania along with her husband and worked as a television news reporter in South Bend, according to a biography posted on her congressional website.
(Reporting by Rami Ayyub, Eric Beech, Dan Whitcomb, Costas Pitas and Frank McGurty; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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