'There was humanity': Crash that killed 4 links Buffalo family with Western Pa. firefighters

It was after dark when off-duty Western Pennsylvania firefighters Kelly and Troy McClelland decided to slide their way down a 140-foot cliff without a rope or harness.

On Aug. 2, off a sharp turn on Big Wheeling Creek Road in West Virginia, the father and son slowly scooted — clinging to trees to stop from slipping — in a sitting position down the steep terrain.

Kelly McClelland described a gruesome scene at the bottom of the drop.

“It messes with your head,” he said. He has struggled to sleep through the night after the discovery.

A 2009 Toyota Camry was lying on its driver’s side, its front end buried in the ground from the impact.

Four bodies were finally recovered after days of searching around the crash site. The discovery forged a bond between the firefighters — who had driven to West Virginia on a whim to help — and the victims’ surviving family members.

On July 29, Kishore Divan, 89, Asha Divan, 85, Shailesh Divan, 87, and Geeta Divan, 81, left from Buffalo, N.Y., to visit a temple called Prabhupada’s Palace of Gold in West Virginia.

Vamil and Mainak Divan, sons of Kishore and Asha Divan, said they became concerned after no one in the family had heard from them for several days. The Divan family began looking at credit card receipts in an attempt to track them down, which revealed their last credit card charges took place on the afternoon of July 29, a Tuesday, at a Burger King in Erie.

“They had two rooms reserved for Tuesday night, but they never showed up,” Vamil Divan said. “So that’s what we sort of realized something very wrong here.”

The family filed missing person reports with police departments in Buffalo, Erie, Pittsburgh and in West Virginia. However, because no one was sure in which state they had gone missing, the family said they ran into “red tape” and limited coordination across jurisdictions.

They planned to stop at a temple in Pittsburgh along the way but did not.

It was unclear which temple they planned to visit and when they planned on making the stop, Vamil Divan said.

In an effort to deepen the search, several family members began driving out to retrace their parents’ steps. They chartered a helicopter to search their route, starting from their last plate scan somewhere on I-79 in West Virginia.

“We were up in the air by 6:30 in the morning on Saturday (Aug. 2),” Mainak Divan said. “But the area around the temple (in West Virginia),the trees also get very thick, and so we couldn’t even see it if we were right above.”

It was through social media that Kelly and Troy McClelland, who are volunteers for Canton Township Volunteer Fire Company Station 52 in Washington County, found out about the Divans’ missing loved ones.

Troy McClelland showed his father a social media post about the search that had been going on for several days.

They decided to drive to West Virginia.

Kelly’s wife, Jan McClelland, and family friend Ronald Rush Jr. and his girlfriend Amariah Dunbar joined them in the search.

While driving around the area, the group noticed a yellow warning sign, which had been previously knocked down by another vehicle, according to firefighters, and car parts around a sharp curve in the road. The parts did not match the Divans’ vehicle, which was lime green. They stopped and checked out the area anyway.

The Divans had crashed roughly five miles away from the temple, Vamil and Mainak said.

From the top of the cliff, Jan McClelland and Dunbar called 911 to alert police of the crash’s location.

Officers from the Marshall County Sheriff’s Office in West Virginia arrived at the scene around 9:20 p.m.

Mainak Divan said the family learned the car was found shortly after the 911 call went out, through a message from someone on Facebook who had heard the call over police scanners. He and his brother then called police, who confirmed it.

Because it had been multiple days since they had gone missing, their bodies had started to decay. The family was unable to have an open casket at the funeral service, Vamil Divan said.

Since discovering the car, Kelly McClelland and his wife said they have talked about the crash every day and have been messaging the Divans at least once a week.

“It’s almost like they’re extended family,” Jan McClelland said.

Kelly McClelland said they went searching without expecting to find anything or receive any recognition.

“Wholeheartedly and absolutely without any selfish reason, their contribution is very, very important in our lives, because there was humanity,” said Samir Diwanji, who is Shailesh and Geeta’s son-in-law. “That’s what we want to thank them for — their courage.”