EMT Heidi Behr, 23, and Paramedic William Stone, 30 were kiled when thier ambulance was involved in a horrendous crash.

Bill Stone, of Rocky Point, was engaged to be married and had been working for several months as a paid paramedic responder.

"It's horrible," Behr's mother, June Behr, said Tuesday from her Riverhead home, where her daughter also lived.

"It's terrible. It's disheartening. It's very scary," said David Brenner, chairman of the Suffolk Regional EMS Council. "The reality is that it can happen to us. I'm sure there will be a massive turnout at the funerals."

According to the official, the ambulance was traveling west with its sirens blaring behind the truck, which moved toward the right shoulder. The ambulance driver, apparently thinking the truck was moving out of the away, started to pass it on the left -- but the truck, rather than moving aside, was beginning a wide left turn, and the ambulance then had to swerve to avoid a collision.

The crash ripped off the passenger side of the white and blue-striped ambulance and scattered medical equipment, masks, tubing, boxes and metal shards across the roadway.

Afterward, police closed off a half-mile stretch of the county road, as investigators began combing through the wreckage. They remained at the scene into the early evening hours.

Both Behr and Stone were in the back of the ambulance caring for the patient when it struck the tree.

"It often happens that the patient comes out the best in this situation because they're always buckled in and you're in the back working with them, giving them oxygen," Brenner said. "You try to stay buckled in but sometimes you have to get out of your seat and that puts you in jeopardy."

Officials said the driver is 29, the patient 67.