Police: Up to 6 students blindfolded in N.H. crash

PLYMOUTH, N.H. – A sport utility vehicle carrying 10 Plymouth State University students taking part in a possible sorority hazing may have been intentionally jerked or swayed just before it crashed this week, killing one of the women, police said.

Ten young women, including two from Maine, were in the Jeep Grand Cherokee – designed to seat five – when it slid off a road in the rain near campus Monday night.

As many as six of the women were blindfolded, police said.

Kelly Nester of Coventry, R.I., a passenger, was thrown from the Jeep and killed.

About 400 people attended her funeral Friday in Rhode Island. A family friend read a letter written by Nester’s sister, Kristen.

“You were the best listener, the best hugger, the best friend,” Kristen Nester wrote, saying she remembered Kelly as someone who loved to shop and talk about boys.

“She loved all those around her,” she went on. “When she fell in love, she fell hard and loved with all her heart.”

It was not clear whether she was one of six pledges in the vehicle during a possible sorority hazing, Plymouth police Capt. Steve Temperino said.

Hazing is illegal in New Hampshire, punishable by a maximum fine of $1,000, but it was too early to say whether that charge or more serious ones would be brought, Grafton County Attorney Rick St. Hillaire said.

“Hazing at this level is not common at all” in Plymouth, Richard Hage, the university’s vice president for student affairs, said Friday.

The vehicle was driven by Nicole Dalton, 20, of Rochester. Police said they were looking into whether Dalton was intentionally swerving or jerking the steering wheel. A woman who answered the phone Friday morning at a Dalton residence hung up.

Dalton was a “sister” of Sigma Kappa Omega, an unrecognized sorority on campus.

The organization was formed when a handful of women, including Dalton, broke away from the nationally recognized Alpha Sigma Alpha in April.

Tracie Massey, an administrator who oversees Greek life, said this is the first time a group of students at Plymouth State has broken from a nationally recognized sorority to form an underground one.

“They’re not rogue students,” she said. “It’s just a rogue group.”

Such groups have lost their recognition for reasons ranging from alcohol, poor academic performance or because they can’t afford the insurance on their residence. The university does not keep lists of students who belong or track their grades, Massey said.

No one answered the door at the Sigma Kappa Omega house on Thursday.

A mile away at the accident site on Route 3, a makeshift memorial of flowers sat on an embankment; nearby were pieces of the crashed vehicle and a broken cassette tape.

A senior who said she knows the students involved in the accident fears the whole Greek system or the women in the car will be unfairly blamed for Nester’s death.