Police identify American couple killed in Rainbow Bridge crash, explosion

Police have identified the two people killed in a fiery crash at the Rainbow Bridge border crossing in Niagara Falls earlier this week.

The Niagara Falls Police Department say the occupants of the speeding vehicle that lost control on the U.S. side of the border were 53-year-old Kurt P. Villani and his wife, 53-year-old Monica Villani, of Grand Island, a suburb on the Niagara River between Buffalo and Niagara Falls.

Online business records and the company website indicate the victims’ family owns Gui’s Lumber and seven Ace Hardware locations in western New York.

The couple was killed in the collision and explosion around 11:30 a.m. Wednesday. The incident prompted an FBI investigation and set off security alerts on both sides of the border, until officials determined it was a local police matter and nothing more.

The president of the Grand Island Chamber of Commerce said Friday that the couple’s support for their community was well known.

“They gave from their heart, so they didn’t make a big deal about it,” Eric Fiebelkorn said.

Mike Billoni was with Niagara Frontier Publications in 2014 when he photographed Kurt P. Villani and his son, Kurt Jr., as they dropped off a load of turkeys for a local food drive.

The Villanis were carrying on an annual tradition of donating 250 turkeys begun six years earlier by the older Villani’s parents, Kurt and Gail Villani, Billoni wrote in a news story at the time.

“It was such a wonderful gesture to see the philanthropy of the father passed on to the son, who then passed it down to his son,” Billoni recalled Friday. It was unclear whether the tradition continued.

The eldest Villani died last year, leaving a void in the close-knit business community that has now grown with the loss of the son, Fiebelkorn said.

Video released from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows the couple’s Bentley speeding into the customs area, striking a curb and flying through the air before crashing into a row of checkpoint booths and bursting into flames.

The investigation into what caused the crash continues, with investigators looking at whether medical or mechanical issues may have contributed, Niagara Falls Police Chief John Faso told local media.

Police have not publicly confirmed media reports that the car’s occupants had just left the nearby Seneca Niagara casino and may have been bound for Canada when the crash occurred.

Traffic resumed Thursday night across the Rainbow Bridge.

Files from The Associated Press were used in this report