The driver of a vehicle that crashed on Dec. 27 on the Capital Beltway in Speringfield, Va., killing himself, his daughter and his sister, was an Allentown man with ties to the Walnutport area.

Peter Stesney Jr., 87, was driving a Ford Ranger pickup truck that slammed into the rear of a tractor trailer on the ramp from Interstate 495 to southbound I-95 at the Springfield interchange. Stesney, his daughter, Laura Kordelski, 51, of Allentown, and his sister, Bernice Supinski, 85, of Bath, were pronounced dead at the scene. Officials said they were traveling to Florida to attend a funeral of a relative when the accident happened.Police say the tractor-trailer was stopped in traffic when the pickup truck driven by Stesney crashed into it from behind.Stesney was a near-40-year veteran of the Coast Guard and Navy who attended church in Cherryville, was a member of the Walnutport Legion and has a stepdaughter and her husband living in that community.The obituaries of he and his daughter appear on Page 4 of today's paper.