After tragedy recently struck Oklahoma when a deadly twister tore through the Oklahoma City suburbs, another twister hit near Union City, Okla. on May 31, killing five people including a mother and her baby, ABC News reports.
Amy Elliott, a spokesperson for the state medical examiner, announced the death toll. She said the twister first struck near El Reno, killing one person. Hospital officials said that about 50 people were injured, including five critically.
"A mother and baby lost their lives out here tonight. They were swept up in the storm," Betsy Randolph, the spokesman for the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, said to ABC News. The mother and baby were sucked out of their car during the storm, which included an estimated five tornadoes that smashed cars and trucks, turned roads to rivers and left many huddled in walk-in freezers, waiting out the storm.
Randolph said that the woman and her baby where stuck in rush hour traffic on Interstate 40 when the storm hit, just miles from the town of Moore where a massive tornado recently killed 24 people on May 20.
"They were swept up in the storm...(They were) traveling on the interstate and their car was sucked up into the tornado and they were sucked out of their vehicle and thrown from their vehicle," she said. "We know that the storm picked them up and swept them away. When the troopers found them, they were both deceased."
She described the situation on the interstate to ABC News. "The sky was black, there was debris flying through the air," Randolph said, recalling hail the size of "softballs" that hit people as they tried to escape from their cars that were colliding and flying into the air during the storm. "It was absolute chaos with all the crashes and vehicles flying through the air," she said.
The area also suffered flash floods and widespread power outages, in addition to multiple crashes and flipped vehicles.
Click here to see photos of the twisters' destructive aftermath.
