James Fisher

The News Journal

Tricia Martin%2C 42%2C and her daughter Taryn%2C 10%2C died as a result of injuries suffered in a crash Friday night

Martin was principal of Milford Central Academy

Faculty gathered at Milford High School Sunday to discuss what procedures would be in place Monday%2C including a crisis team to help grieving students and faculty

MILFORD Tina Walls' daughter was moving from fifth grade to sixth last year, a change the girl dreaded. But after her daughter met the principal at Milford Central Academy, the school she was bound for, she was happier about the prospect.

"She was scared to come here. And then she met Dr. Martin," Walls, 39, of Milford, said Monday in the school's parking lot. "My daughter had some issues before she came here, and she [Martin] settled all of them."

Walls was just one of many people thinking on Monday of how Dr. Tricia R. Martin, the 42-year-old middle-school principal who died Friday in an auto accident, had affected them and their children. Martin and her 10-year-old daughter, Taryn Martin, both died of injuries sustained in the crash.

A funeral service for both will be held Saturday at 11 a.m. at Torbert Funeral Chapel in Dover, the funeral home announced in an obituary notice, with viewings on Friday from 6-9 p.m. and Saturday from 10-11 a.m.

At the school Monday, teachers and students placed notes, flowers and stuffed animals in front of their principal's empty parking space. "We have to live the rest of the School Year for her," one unsigned note read. "Dr. Martin is in a better place. Her and her daughter are."

Sylvia Henderson, the Milford School District's director of student support, said she'd known Martin as a colleague and friend for 12 years. "She was an outstanding leader," Henderson said of Martin. "She had a way, when she walked into a room, to make you feel better about yourself. ... It's been a somber day, a somber weekend. We're very sad. We're very blessed that we had her in our lives."

Martin was driving a 2009 Acura MDX westbound on Barratts Chapel Road Friday at 10:40 p.m. when her car crossed over the eastbound lanes, went off the road into a ditch and hit a telephone box and fence, according to Master Cpl. Gary Fournier of the Delaware State Police. The Acura hit an embankment and flipped onto its side, facing west in the eastbound lane.

With Martin still in the vehicle, her daughter got out and tried to ask for help from a passing vehicle that was stopped in the roadway, Fournier said. But at that moment, an eastbound 2005 GMC Yukon SUV operated by Richard B. Triola, 49, of Magnolia, hit the overturned Acura and pushed it off the road. Martin was ejected from her vehicle and thrown onto the roadway, Fournier said; she died after being flown to Christiana Hospital.

Martin's daughter was hit by one of the two vehicles, police said, and she wastaken first to Kent General Hospital, then to Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Children's Hospital in Rockland. Taryn Martin was not immediately killed but died at the hospital on Sunday, a Nemours spokesman, Chris Manning, confirmed Monday.

On Monday, Fournier said police were still investigating the accident and had not filed any charges.

Contact James Fisher at 983-6772, on Twitter @JamesFisherTNJ or jfisher@delawareonline.com.