A mother and daughter were killed Saturday when their vehicle was struck by a car being driven in the wrong direction on Interstate 270 in Maryland, state police said.
According to a preliminary investigation, a Ford Mustang was traveling northbound in the southbound lanes of I-270 in Montgomery County when it struck a Toyota Camry head-on, state police said. The crash occurred just south of Democracy Boulevard in Bethesda. State police responded at 6:46 p.m.
Investigators believe impairment was a contributing factor in the crash, state police said.
Two of the Toyota’s passengers, Musammat Shamima Begum, 46, and Areebah Jahin, 23, of Virginia, were killed, state police said.
A 62-year-old man and an 8-year-old girl also in the Toyota were taken to hospitals to treat their injuries.
The driver of the Ford, Jose Caballero Nolasco, 32, was charged with two counts of gross negligent manslaughter, two counts of homicide by motor vehicle while impaired by alcohol, and one count of life-threatening injury by motor vehicle, state police said.
After the crash, Nolasco, of Germantown, was treated for his injuries at a hospital and transferred to the Montgomery County Detention Center.
Lanes were closed for about five hours for the crash investigation, which is ongoing.
Traffic deaths are down in Maryland this year, according to the state’s highway safety office. There have been 273 traffic fatalities so far this year, compared with 312 during the same period last year. Montgomery, the state’s most populous county, has the second-highest number of traffic fatalities so far this year.
In 2025, there were 44 traffic deaths in Montgomery, 20 of which were in crashes where at least one driver was believed to be under the influence of alcohol or drugs, according to the state’s highway safety office.
Saturday’s crash comes shortly after the Montgomery County Police Department confirmed it would dissolve its unit combating drunken driving and impaired driving, a change set to take place soon. The department said the cut is necessary due to staffing shortages and operations needs.
Assistant Chief David McBain said the department “is committed to continued enforcement,” including through the continuation of the holiday alcohol task force and the summer alcohol task force, which target impaired drivers from near Thanksgiving to New Year’s, as well as over the summer.
The five officers working on the Alcohol Initiative Unit, which was still operating over the weekend, were given three weeks notice before their transfer to new assignments, according to police spokesperson Shiera Goff.
In the past month, the Alcohol Initiative Unit made four DUI arrests, compared with 42 DUI arrests made by other countywide police officers, according to Goff.
Montgomery County Council member Dawn Luedtke, who serves on the Public Safety Committee, said she understood that the unit’s dissolution, coupled with Saturday’s fatal crash, have made some residents concerned that the police department is deprioritizing work to reduce impaired driving.
“That’s not the case,” she said. “All patrol officers cover it.”
The post Mother, daughter killed in interstate crash with wrong-way driver, police say appeared first on Washington Post.
