Man Dies on Christmas Eve After Crash at Nativity

(Dec. 24) – An Ohio man died on Christmas Eve morning from injuries suffered after he was struck by a pickup truck Wednesday night while he and friends were photographing a live Nativity scene.

Cleveland TV station WOIO identified the victim as 57-year-old Richard Seckman of Ashtabula, Ohio. He was flown to a Cleveland hospital after the accident. A dispatcher for the Ashtabula Police Department said no one would be available to speak until Saturday.

The man was viewing the Nativity scene with four friends, according to a report in the Ashtabula Star Beacon, when the truck swerved trying to avoid a silver car and careened into the pedestrians and then into a telephone pole.

"Those five people come every year," one of the actors in the Nativity scene told the newspapers. "I heard the truck, it came up on the sidewalk and knocked them over."

The Rev. Wallace Scofield said none of the onlookers is a member of his Trinity Presbyterian Church in Ashtabula, which has been putting on the Nativity event for several years.

"Everything there was for goodness and enjoyment ... and yet we have this tragedy," he said.

He said he would tell his congregation at the Christmas Eve service: "We're not exempt from these kind of things ... even at this time of year. ... We'll be praying for the victims and their families, and we'll keep them in our minds all during the holidays."

Ashtabula is about 55 miles northeast of Cleveland.

A spokesman for Community Care Ambulance, which responded to the scene, said that two victims were flown to MetroHealth in Cleveland after the accident. No one at MetroHealth was available to discuss the condition of the victims.

Police told the local newspaper that at least three people who were taking photographs of the Nativity were taken to the hospital.

Another witness told the newspaper that "one man looked like he had been thrown 30 feet and his camera was next to him."

The newspaper reported that the driver of the truck did not appear to be injured. No charges had been filed Thursday.

Scofield said the church closed the Nativity scene for the rest of the season.