Four people killed, including two children, in head-on crash in McPherson County

Four people were killed, including two children, after a wrong-way driver caused a head-on collision early Saturday morning in McPherson County.

A 29-year-old Hutchinson man had reported serious injuries.

The wreck happened at 12:25 a.m. on I-135.

Jacob F. Aich, a 36-year-old Hutchinson man, was driving a 2012 Honda CR-Z south in the northbound lanes when he hit head-on with a 2013 Toyota Rav 4 driven by 31-year-old Lydia Barton of Wichita, according to the Kansas Highway Patrol.

They died at the scene; as did two boys from Monument, Colorado, who were in Barton’s vehicle — 7-year-old Ronan Barton and 13-year-old Jesse Kinney.

Aich’s vehicle came to a rest in the median; Lydia Barton’s on the edge of the east shoulder, a trooper wrote in the crash log.

Both Aich and the passenger in his vehicle are nurses at Hutchinson Regional Medical Center, according to their online social media accounts.

The relationship between the people in each vehicle wasn’t immediately available. A KHP trooper said at 2:41 p.m. that the crash and those details are still being investigated.

This story was originally published January 4, 2025 at 4:04 PM.