Police change account of crash killing Indiana Rep. Walorski
By TOM DAVIES
August 4, 2022
FILE - In this July 19, 2018, photo, Rep. Jackie Walorski, R-Ind., speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington. Walorski's office says that she was killed Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2022, in a car accident. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Police have changed their description of the crash that killed Indiana Republican U.S. Rep. Jackie Walorski, saying Thursday that it was the SUV in which she was a passenger that crossed a state highway’s centerline and caused the head-on collision.
Walorski and two members of her congressional staff died in the Wednesday afternoon crash in northern Indiana, along with the woman driving the other vehicle, the Elkhart County Sheriff’s Office said.
The department’s initial account was that the car driven by Edith Schmucker, 56, Nappanee, Indiana, crossed into the SUV’s path, but the office released a statement Thursday saying investigators had talked with witnesses and viewed video evidence that their preliminary determination of which direction the vehicles were traveling was incorrect.
Investigators determined that the SUV driven by Zachery Potts, 27, of Mishawaka, Indiana, crossed the centerline for unknown reasons in a rural area near the town of Wakarusa. Potts was Walorski’s district director and the Republican chairman for northern Indiana’s St. Joseph County. Also killed was Emma Thomson, 28, of Washington, D.C., who was Walorski’s communications director.
Walorski, 58, was first elected to represent northern Indiana’s 2nd Congressional District in 2012 and was seeking reelection this year to a sixth term in the solidly Republican district. Walorski was a reliable Republican vote in Congress, including against accepting the Arizona and Pennsylvania electoral votes for President Joe Biden following the Capitol insurrection.
