3 Young Women Killed In Separate, Tragic N.J. Traffic Crashes This Past Week

Heartbreaking funerals were scheduled to be held this week involving young women killed in three separate and recent New Jersey crashes.

Families of two local women will lay their loved ones to rest Saturday after their deaths in two separate and equally tragic New Jersey traffic crashes. Another woman was laid to rest on Thursday.

Megan Longo Villanella, a 2000 Council Rock High School, Pennsylvania, graduate, was killed March 3 while waiting for a bus in Verona, New Jersey.

Lea Nicole Sterner Pringle, 39, of Lower Makefield, Pennsylvania, was killed Tuesday after being hit by a car in Trenton, New Jersey.

Terry DiFalco, 13, of Westfield was killed Saturday, March 4 when she was struck by a state trooper in her hometown.

Villanella was due with her second child in May. The baby did not survive the crash.

Anthony V. Casale Jr., 25, has been charged with first-degree death by auto in connection with Villanella's death. Police say he was driving while under the influence.

Police say around 7:45 a.m. that morning, Villanella and her 30-year-old brother were waiting at a bus stop when Casale struck them in a 2006 white Mitsubishi. Villanella sustained fatal injuries, and her brother was critically injured.

Villanella lived most of her life in Ivyland, Pennsylvania, attending Churchville Elementary School and graduating high school with honors, her obituary says. She was married with a 22-month-old daughter, Isabelle Ava.

Services for Villanella will be held Saturday in Richboro, Pennsylvania.

Pringle was a 1997 Pennsbury graduate and the mother of two children. Police are still searching for the driver of the car that struck Pringle on North Olden Avenue around 12:30 a.m., according to NJ.com.

Her family describes her as a "devoted, proud, and wonderful" mother to her children.

Services for Pringle are Saturday in Yardley, Pennsylvania.

DiFalco, a freshman at Westfield High School who was active in school plays, was killed by the state trooper's vehicle. She was playing in a scavenger hunt that was organized by kids in the theater program.

The state police have not commented on the matter, and the driver was not identified as of Friday.

Services for DiFalco were on Thursday in Westfield.

Mothers like Josie Varga, a mother who lives a few blocks from the Westfield crash site, said her daughters attended a candlelight vigil this week at the high school, held in DiFalco's memory. Hundreds gathered on the front lawn in the bitter cold, she said, to console each other and remember a girl whose life "was taken far too soon."

Varga penned a tribute to DiFalco on her blog this past week, saying her daughters, Erica and Lia, were both shaken up when they came home from the vigil. "Erica sent out a text message to family and friends telling them how much she loved them.

"When I received her text, I went up to her room to find her sobbing and held her in my arms."

With reporting by Kara Seymour and Eric Kiefer

Photo 1: Megan Villanella, from her obituary. Photo 2: Lea Pringle, from her obituary. Photo 3: Terry DiFalco, from her obituary.