Astronaut James Halsell Jr seemed the very definition of someone with the right stuff – an Air Force Academy graduate and decorated test pilot, he flew on five space shuttle missions, either as commander or pilot. Nasa even turned to him for leadership as it was picking up the pieces after the Columbia disaster in 2003.

Now, a decade after his retirement from the space agency, the 59-year-old Halsell’s life has taken a shocking turn: he is charged with murder after an early morning car crash killed two young sisters on a lonely stretch of highway in Alabama.

State police said alcohol and speed may have been factors in the crash.

Troopers said a vehicle driven by Halsell collided about 2.50am on Monday with a Ford Fiesta in which 11-year-old Niomi Deona James and 13-year-old Jayla Latrick Parler were riding. The girls were thrown from the car and died. Neither had been wearing a seatbelt, the authorities said.

Halsell, who lives in Huntsville, was arrested and released from jail on $150,000 bail.

James Halsell speaks to reporters at Cape Canaveral, Flordia, in April 2000. Photograph: Peter Cosgrove/AP

The girls’ father, Pernell James, 37, had driven to Texas to pick them up at their mother’s home in Houston for a summer-long visit to Alabama, said Dennis Stripling, mayor of the town of Brent.

“It’s very tragic, a sad thing that has happened,” Stripling said. “They were like 20 minutes from home when this accident happened.”

The father was expected to be released from a hospital on Tuesday. A woman in his car, Shontel Latriva Cutts, 25, was listed in fair condition.

The crash happened in a remote, wooded area on the edge of Tuscaloosa county with no highway lampposts.

Halsell, who told officers he had been driving to Louisiana to pick up his son, did not remember the crash, documents said.

Halsell’s vehicle rear-ended the car carrying the children, documents showed, pushing the vehicle across a lane and causing it to flip.

“Halsell’s speech was slurred, eyes were dilated, clothes dishevelled and he was unstable on his feet and smelled of alcohol,” the trooper wrote in a court deposition, according to the newspaper.

Halsell graduated from the US Air Force Academy in 1978 and later finished first in his class at test-pilot school. He applied for every Nasa astronaut class from 1978 to 1990, when he was accepted.



An online biography by Nasa said Halsell went to work in the aerospace industry in 2006 after a career that included five shuttle flights starting in 1994. He spent more than 1,250 hours in space, serving as commander on three shuttle missions and pilot on two others.



He also led Nasa’s return-to-flight planning team after space shuttle Columbia disintegrated during re-entry in 2003.

In Brent the mayor said city hall was collecting monetary donations to help the girls’ family with funeral expenses and other needs.