A Sumner County, Tenn., school bus is driven past a memorial today where seven people died during a fiery crash Friday just west of Portland, Tenn. (Photo by Joe Imel)

PORTLAND, Tenn. As Tennessee police continued the investigation today into a fiery multiple fatality just across the Tennessee state line, passers-by stopped in silence along the busy stretch of U.S. 52 that claimed the lives of seven people. Small, white crosses dotted the base of a larger cross that was erected after the Friday night accident. Everything from flowers with inscriptions, notes and hand-scribbled messages were piled along the scene. It was a site eerily familiar to a June 1998 crash in Warren County that also left seven people including six members of an Indiana family dead. In the 1998 accident, four children and three adults died on Interstate 65 near Oakland when a southbound tractor-trailer truck struck a 200-pound piece of metal that witnesses said fell from a flatbed truck. The tractor-trailer driver lost control of the vehicle, crossed the median and collided with two northbound vehicles. The truck from which the metal object fell has yet to be located. In Tennessee, the reaction was much like the stunned pall that fell over southcentral Kentucky after the accident here. Im just in shock. I never thought I would loose all my children but one, said Remona Brassell, the mother of three of the seven people who died in the accident. Killed in the crash were James H. Brassell, 16; Alicia D. Brassell, 13; Redona Tiffany Brassell, 17; Joe Farquhar, 19; Jamie Marie Green, 16; Stephen L. Carney, 43; and Donna E. Carney, 39.Police are investigating whether speed was a factor in the accident, according to Dana Keeton, public information officer for the Tennessee Department of Safety. She said police dont suspect alcohol was involved. Eyewitnesses told police Farquhar, who was traveling eastbound on U.S. 52, rounded the curve, crossed the center line and continued traveling in the westbound lane. The Carneys, traveling in another vehicle, tried to get out of the way by driving onto the shoulder but could not avoid a collision, according to police reports. Brassell described her children as always being jovial, hard-working and average teenagers. James was spunky, always laughing and cutting up. Alicia was your normal 13-year-old who was starting to notice boys, Brassell said. Tiffany got a job and took care of her two sons. They were always happy kids. Alicia was a seventh-grader at Portland Middle School and James planned to start back at Portland High School in the 10th grade. Fellow classmates at Portland Middle Schoolare dealing with Alicias death, school counselor Nancy Payne said. I think that extra time with their family and friends has helped them to be very calm. The school had a moment of silence during homeroom and first period to express their feelings about the accident, Payne said.