Missouri: Brothers, six and seven, die after crashing their grandparents' car into tree
The car overturned and landed on its roof before becoming engulfed in flames as it crashed into a tree.
Tuesday 2 June 2020 16:32, UK
Two brothers aged six and seven have died after the older child got behind the wheel of a car at their grandparents' home and crashed into a tree.
The seven-year-old, with his sibling in one of the passenger seats, drove the vehicle through a field and then on to a country road - travelling east - near Kansas City, Missouri.
The Missouri Highway Patrol said in its report that the 2007 Buick LaCrosse hit a road barrier and a guy-wire (a tensioned cable used to support a free-stranding structure), before overturning and crashing into a tree.
The vehicle landed on its roof and caught fire, and the brothers - whose identities have not been released - were pronounced dead at the scene.
Sergeant Andy Bell, from the highway patrol, said: "It's pretty unique, to say the least, and devastating."
He added that speed "had to have been a contributing factor" for the car to have flipped in the way that it did, but an investigation into the incident is still ongoing.
The highway patrol and the Jackson County Sheriff's Department are looking into what happened and how the boys came into possession of the vehicle.
The area where the crash happened, east of Kansas City, is not covered by a local authority.