WASHINGTON, Aug 3 (Reuters) – U.S. Congresswoman Jackie Walorski and two members of her staff were killed on Wednesday when the vehicle they were traveling in collided head-on with a car that veered into their lane, police in Indiana and her office.
Walorski, 58, a Republican who represented Indiana’s 2nd congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives, was panned by President Joe Biden and her colleagues in Congress as an honest public servant who sought to work across party lines to ensure their constituents. The White House said it would fly flags at half-staff in her memory.
The congresswoman was on a road trip in Indiana Wednesday afternoon with her communications chief, Emma Thomson, 28, and one of her district directors, Zachery Potts, 27, the Elkhart County Sheriff’s Office said.
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“A northbound passenger vehicle was traveling left of center and collided head-on” with Walorski’s vehicle, killing all three occupants, the sheriff’s office said. The driver of the other car, 56-year-old Edith Schmucker, was pronounced dead at the scene near the northern Indiana town of Napanee, it added.
Confirming her death in a statement shared on Twitter by House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, Walorski’s office said: “Dean Swihart, Jackie’s husband, was just informed by the Elkhart County Sheriff’s Office that Jackie was killed in a car accident this afternoon.’
Representative Jackie Walorski (R-IN) speaks as U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar testifies before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Crisis on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., October 2, 2020. Mr. J. Scott Applewhite/Pool via REUTERS
It added: “Please keep her family in your thoughts and prayers. We will have no further comment at this time.”
According to her official bio, Walorski has lived in Indiana all her life. She served on the House Ways and Means Committee and was the top Republican on the Subcommittee on Helping Workers and Families.
Before being elected in 2012 to the House of Representatives, Walorski served three terms in the Indiana Legislature, spent four years as a missionary in Romania with her husband and worked as a television news reporter in South Bend, according to a biography , posted on her congress website.
President Joe Biden, a Democrat, said he and Walorski “may have been from different parties and disagreed on many issues, but she is respected by members of both parties for her work on the House Ways and Means Committee , in which she served”.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement that Walorski “passionately brought the voices of her northern Indiana constituents to Congress, and she was admired by colleagues on both sides of the aisle for her personal kindness.”
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Reporting by Rami Ayoub, Eric Beach, Dan Whitcomb, Kostas Pitas and Frank McGurty; Editing by Leslie Adler and David Gregorio
Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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