3 die in fiery Lexington crash

Investigators at the scene of a fiery, fatal crash Friday on Russell Cave Road could deduce only from the wheels that the black car involved was a late-model GM product.

The driver, Jaymal Washington, 27, of Paris, was thrown from the car after it struck two trees and then burst into flames.

Brock Clark, 31, of Paris, and a female passenger who has not been identified suffered extensive burns.

The Fayette County Coroner’s Office said the female passenger was about five-feet with medium length black hair. She was also small in stature, wearing white tennis shoes, had several fillings in her jaw teeth and a stainless steel crown on her left lower jaw tooth.

All three people died at the scene less than a mile from Russell Cave Elementary School.

“That car was so completely destroyed,” the driver must have been speeding, said Lexington police Sgt. Paul Simms III, who described a catastrophic scene.

The license plate and vehicle identification number melted, Simms said. Two of the three victims were found burned and trapped in the sheet metal of the passenger compartment, but police could not tell where they were sitting before it wrecked.

Investigators say the vehicle, which was headed north, drifted off the left shoulder near the intersection of Russell Cave and Huffman Mill Pike about 1:40 a.m.

The wreck occurred before rain showers later Friday morning so the road was not wet.

Hours after the wreck, spots in the grass were still marked with orange spray paint and fragments of torn police tape clung to the fence surrounding nearby Mount Brilliant Farm and a nearby tree.

A fallen tree that had snapped at the base lie amid hard, plastic car parts — shattered glass, blue medical gloves, burned grass and broken music CDs.

The coroner’s office asked that anyone with information about the unidentified passenger call (859) 455-5700.