Police determined no tickets will be issued to anyone involved in a car accident that resulted in the death of two Syracuse University students Nov. 24.

The Oneida County Sheriff’s Office has been investigating the car accident in the Town of Paris, just south of Utica, in which two SU students were killed and another two were injured. No tickets were issued because the students did not break any laws resulting in the accident. The investigation concluded the car’s global positioning system was set to avoid tolls and the students were unfamiliar with the winding road on which they were traveling, Lt. Brian Phendler said.

The students left Syracuse and were headed toward New York City for Thanksgiving weekend, Phendler said.

“We didn’t understand why they didn’t take the thruway,” he said. But the investigation determined that the GPS system was set to avoid toll roads.

The students were traveling in the dark and Route 12 is a curvy road. Based on the investigation, the students lost control of the car because they were unfamiliar with the road, Phendler said.

Police from the sheriff’s office believe no drugs or alcohol were involved, he said.

The students were traveling northbound on Route 12 in a 2009 Hyundai Elantra when the car went off the road while rounding a sharp curve, hit an embankment and several trees, and came to stop in an open field, The Daily Orange reported in a Nov. 30 article.

The sheriff’s office arrived on the scene at 9:20 p.m. and pronounced Wang Young and Oh Saem dead. Both students were 19 years old. Chang Hyunsung, the driver of the vehicle, and Shin Chaewan, a passenger, were taken to St. Elisabeth Hospital in Utica with nonfatal injuries, The Daily Orange reported. Hyunsung and Chaewan are first-year students in the School of Architecture. Oh and Wang were also first-year students in the School of Architecture.

Published on March 29, 2010 at 12:00 pm