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Valkisergio Costa Silva, 44, of Centerville on Cape Cod, died just after 4:15 p.m. when he was ejected from a Chevrolet Express van traveling southbound on I-95 in Topsfield near Exit 79, Massachusetts State Police said. Three other people in the van, whose names were not released, were taken to area hospitals. One, a 30-year-old man, was airlifted to Boston Medical Center with life-threatening injuries.
The chain-reaction wreck happened when a Chevrolet Arcadia SUV, for unknown reasons, slammed on its brakes on the interstate, police said. A 52-year-old man in a trailing Impala swerved and the van as it tried to avoid the SUV. That pushed the van into the grassy median, where it rolled one-and-a-half times and ejected two of the four people inside, officials said.
The driver of the Impala was not injured.
The two inside the Arcadia got out and ran into the woods after the SUV pulled into the breakdown lane. A State Police helicopter, K-9 unit, and troopers tracked down one of them, officials said.
David Guzman, 30, of Lynn, is charged with interfering with a police officer, state police said. It's unclear if he was driving the SUV.
The second man inside that car remains on the run. Witnesses saw him sprinting across the 17th and 18th holes at the Ferncroft Country Club's golf course, police said.
Police had to shut down three southbound lanes of I-95 and two northbound lanes for several hours as they cleaned up the crash site and searched for the suspects.
The crash is under investigation.
Update: A GoFundMe for Valkisergio Costa Silva is raising money to send his body home to Brazil. The campaign, which is written in Portuguese, said Valkisergio was a father of two teenagers and had lived in Massachusetts for two years before.
The organizer said he was on his way home from work when he was killed. The campaign had raised over $12,000 of its $30,000 goals by Sunday, July 30.
Click here for more information on that GoFundMe.
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