Walorski crash: Surveyor who warned of more crashes if roundabout built says he DOESN'T think roundabout contributed to crash

But then why did the SUV carrying Rep. Jackie Walorski cross the center line?

In 2014, when the state of Indiana announced it wanted to put a roundabout at the intersection of two state roads in northern Indiana, the county surveyor warned that it could lead to more accidents.

"How do you get a 16 x 70 modular home through there?" then-Elkhart County surveyor Blake Doriot was quoted as saying in the media. "I think it's too tight, and then, you pack in buggies and bicycles and factory traffic. It just kind of looks like a recipe for accidents."

The roundabout was constructed in 2015, at the intersection of State Road 19 and State Road 119 a few miles north of the town of Nappanee in Elkhart County, in “Amish country” (hence the reference to buggies).

It was at this intersection on Aug. 3, on the approach to the roundabout as the road curves to the right, that U.S. Rep. Jackie Walorski and two of her aides were killed in a horrific head-on crash that also killed the driver of the other vehicle, Edith Schmucker.

The vehicle carrying Walorski was a Toyota RAV4 driven by her district director, 27-year-old Zachery Potts.

They were heading northbound, going from one meeting to another on a Wednesday during the August congressional recess when their vehicle crossed the centerline into the southbound lane, hitting Schmucker’s car.

In a conversation with Crossroads Report this week, the former surveyor — Blake Doriot — who is now a state senator, says he doesn’t think the concerns he had about the proposed roundabout in 2014 have any relation to the crash that killed Walorski.

He says he was primarily concerned in 2014 about the ability of mobile homes manufactured in the area to get around the roundabout as it was first designed. He says it didn’t seem large enough and that there was also a concern about curbing.

“INDOT answered all those questions and they included it in their design,” he said this week.

Indiana State Sen. Blake Doriot (R-Goshen)

He says he went through the exact same intersection on the day of the crash, Aug. 3, about a half hour before Walorski did, on his way to Indianapolis — and that he returned to it after the accident to try to figure out what may have happened.

“I went out and looked at it, and, they offset curves on roundabouts to slow people down,” he said. “And something happened that my friend Zach didn’t see it or didn’t slow down, and he just went straight as if the curve wasn’t there.”

He said he noted the two, bright orange caution signs on the northbound approach to the roundabout, and also white signs with black print indicating that a junction of two roads was ahead.

“I pulled off and stopped and I thought, ‘I don’t know what happened, because the entrance to that is so well marked.’ So I’m at a loss,” Doriot told Crossroads Report.

The crash happened just as the road curves to the east before the roundabout.

In the screenshot of this video, posted to Facebook, you can see the second bright orange caution sign on the right at the approach to the intersection, where the road starts to curve:

On Aug. 3, the RAV4 driven by Potts kept going straight instead of following the curvature of the road, usually described on accident reports as: “driver failed to negotiate the turn (or curve).”

“If Mrs. Schmucker hadn’t been coming the other way, they would have hit that curve and it would have been a glancing blow, and, probably would have gotten hurt, but it wouldn’t have been a fatal wreck,” says Doriot. “They would have hit the guard rail from the curve.”

Doriot was elected to the Indiana Senate in 2016, and was re-elected in 2020.

He’s a land surveyor by profession.

“I believe that in 99.9 percent of the cases, an accident in that roundabout is going to be less dangerous than if it was the old intersection,” he said. “Unfortunately, this was that one time and I lost three friends.”

The crash is being investigated by the Elkhart County Sheriff’s Office.

Crossroads Report sent an email on Thursday to the person handling media inquiries — Chief Deputy Sean Holmes. The email included two questions:

Can you tell me whether any testing is being done on the vehicle driven by Zachery Potts to determine whether there was a mechanical malfunction?

Also, can you tell me if any tests were done or are being done to determine whether Potts may have had a medical event at the time of the crash?

In his response, Holmes declined to answer either question, only saying that the investigation into the crash is ongoing and that the findings will be released once it is completed.