INDIANAPOLIS — Police have changed their description of the crash that killed Indiana Republican U.S. Rep. Jackie Walorski, saying Thursday that it was the SUV in which she was a passenger that crossed a state highway’s centerline and caused the head-on collision.

Walorski and two members of her congressional staff died in the Wednesday afternoon crash in northern Indiana, along with the woman driving the other vehicle, the Elkhart County Sheriff’s Office said.

The department’s initial account was that the car driven by Edith Schmucker, 56, Nappanee, Indiana, crossed into the SUV’s path, but the office released a statement Thursday saying investigators had talked with witnesses and viewed video evidence that their preliminary determination of which direction the vehicles were traveling was incorrect.

Investigators determined that the SUV driven by Zachery Potts, 27, of Mishawaka, Indiana, crossed the centerline for unknown reasons in a rural area near the town of Wakarusa. Potts was Walorski’s district director and the Republican chairman for northern Indiana’s St. Joseph County. Also killed was Emma Thomson, 28, of Washington, D.C., who was Walorski’s communications director.

Thomson was a 2012 graduate of Bishop McCort and led U.S. Rep. John Joyce’s first re-election campaign.

Joyce said Thomson loved her hometown of Johnstown and the communities where she grew up in Cambria County.

“Simply put, there was no greater champion for Johnstown and Cambria County in Washington, D.C., than Emma Thomson,” Joyce stated in the post.

Walorski, 58, was first elected to represent northern Indiana’s 2nd Congressional District in 2012 and was seeking reelection this year to a sixth term in the solidly Republican district. Walorski was a reliable Republican vote in Congress, including against accepting the Arizona and Pennsylvania electoral votes for President Joe Biden following the Capitol insurrection.

Under Indiana law, it will be up to local Republican officials to pick a candidate to replace Walorski on the election ballot. Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb has the authority to schedule a special election to fill the remainder of Walorski’s current term, which ends this year.

The governor’s office and the state Republican Party both said Thursday it was too soon to say when those decisions would be made, as tributes to Walorski’s public service continued.