Girl's traffic death stuns family

As soon as his daughter left home to pick up her boyfriend at Lenape High School on Monday, Lee Ormerod got a feeling.

It was only a three-minute ride, but he texted her anyway: Are you OK?

Moments later, he heard sirens wailing. Then her boyfriend called.

Deanna Ormerod, an outgoing 18-year-old cheerleader, never completed the short drive from Mount Laurel.

Police said Ormerod was killed when her black 1996 Honda Civic and a black 2006 Honda Accord, driven by Edward Thorn, 65, collided about 3:45 p.m. in the southbound lane of Hartford Road in Medford, roughly a quarter-mile from Lenape High.

Ormerod was traveling north and Thorn was traveling south on Hartford Road, police said. There were no passengers.

Thorn, a Medford resident, was in critical condition yesterday at Cooper University Hospital, according to the hospital.

Both drivers were wearing seat belts, and there is no evidence that alcohol was involved, Medford Police Lt. Jeffrey Wagner said. No charges have been filed, he said.

Ormerod, a senior at Lenape, was extricated from her vehicle and went into cardiac arrest before she could be airlifted to a hospital, her mother, Michelline Ormerod, said.

"She was an amazing girl, and she was going to be an amazing woman," her mother said. "It's mind-boggling. I can't even comprehend the loss."

Deanna Ormerod had musical bones, her family said. She played the piano as a child, taught herself the guitar, and gravitated to the violin.

She was an extrovert, "a kid," her mother joked, "who they couldn't get to shut up in class."

She volunteered with Trinity Episcopal Church in Moorestown, cooking breakfast for the homeless in Camden, her mother said.

Deanna Ormerod got home from school around 2:30 p.m. Monday.

She emptied the cat litter, took out the trash, brought in the mail, and did the dishes.

She left to pick up Kyle Houseal, 17, a fellow Lenape student whom she had been dating for more than a year. The teenagers planned to go to Cherry Hill Mall.

When she didn't answer her father's text message or his phone calls, Lee Ormerod grew more worried.

"She was one of those kids who always told you where she was going to be," her mother said. "If her plans changed, she'd let you know."

About 4:15 p.m., the family went looking for her.

The Ormerods pulled up at the intersection of Hartford and Church Roads and found Hartford barricaded. There had been a crash up the road.

"We had heard that it was two black cars," her father said.

"We just wanted to make sure it wasn't her."