United Press International

Fourteen years ago the worst traffic accident in Idaho history slaughtered six members of a Fayetteville, Ark., family, an Emmett, Idaho couple and two other people. There was only one survivor—a 12-year-old boy.

The accident occurred near American Falls. Idaho State Police later determined that Harry J. Bryner, 72, mysteriously swerved his car into the path of an auto carrying seven members of the Warford family.

An autopsy report showed that Bryner had a heart condition, however it was not serious enough to have caused the accident. Why he swerved over the center divider was never determined.

Killed in addition to Bryner were his wife, Margaret, 70, Ivan L. Scott, 56, and Elizabeth Beach Johnson, 81, all passengers in the car he was driving; and six members of the Warford family: Elmer, 52, Zona, 46, Claude, 22, Darlene, 20, Alice, 17, and Dorothy Faye, 9. Only Billy Warford survived.

"Everybody’s dead but the little boy, and he couldn’t tell us what happened," Power County Coroner Bud Kelly said at the time. "There was no apparent reason. It could have been anything. However, we know it was not a heart attack."

After 14 years, Kelly knows little more than he knew in April 1965.

"The cause was never determined," Kelly said today in a phone interview from American Falls.

"There is a lot of speculation. It was possibly a malfunction in one of the cars. It was possibly a malfunction of one of the drivers (Bryner), who went across the road into the other car."

Kelly drove Billy Warford to the hospital but said he never spoke to the boy.

"I did haul him to the hospital, but I didn’t talk to him. He didn’t remember anything, didn’t know what happened."

"I think my father and brother are dead," a minister later quoted the boy as saying. "I saw my little sister on the dashboard and she was covered with blood. Are they gone?"

"They are all gone," the minister told Billy, who suffered a fractured nose and leg. He did not cry and took comfort in the fact that his two sisters and a brother, who stayed in Arkansas, were still alive.

"As far as I know it’s the worst accident we’ve ever had in Idaho, barring none," Kelly said. "There were more people killed than in any other accident. It practically wiped out one family."

Kelly called the accident one of the worst he has handled. Ironically, it occurred on U.S. 30N—near Massacre Rock.