FOUR DEAD IN TWO TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS FRIDAY

CHARLESTON -- Investigators worked to reconstruct an accidentthat killed three adults, including a husband and wife, and seriously injured their four children.

The crash Friday night on Interstate 57 in southeastern Missouri involved a northbound car driven by Malcolm Bone, 47, of Bertrand, and a southbound car driven by Allene Mor, 66, of Charleston, the Missouri State Highway Patrol said.

Mor, Bone and Bone's wife, Sherrie Bone, 40, died in the crash, and the Bones' four children were injured, the patrol said.

No other details were known Saturday. A crash investigation team from St. Louis was at the scene Saturday afternoon, Trooper Danielle Heil said.

A 40-foot grass median divides the two northbound lanes of Interstate 57 from the two southbound lanes, Heil said.

One of the Bones' children, Leanna Bone, 11, remained in Missouri Delta Medical Center Saturday afternoon. She was in stable condition and improving, house manager Earl Sisk said.

Her brother, Matthew Bone, 15, was transferred Saturday from Missouri Delta to Children's Hospital in St. Louis, where he was in serious condition, Sisk said.

The other two children - Shennia Bone, 17, and Ryan Bone, 9 - were transferred to St. Francis Medical Center in Cape Girardeau, where both were in serious but stable condition, according to a nursing supervisor who declined to give her name.

The accident was one of two fatal traffic mishaps in Southeast Missouri Friday night.

Timothy Allen Smith, 36, of Puxico died when his motorcycle ran off the side of a roadway and into a ditch in Butler County.

The motorcycle accident occurred at 8:25 on Route T, a half mile south of Wappapello.