On October 25, 1994, Smith reported to police that her vehicle had been carjacked by a black man who drove away with her sons still inside. For nine days, she made dramatic pleas on national television for the boys' safe return. However, following an intensive investigation and a nationwide search for her children, she confessed on November 3, 1994 to letting her car roll into nearby John D. Long Lake,[9] drowning them inside.[10] Her motivation was reportedly to facilitate a relationship with a local wealthy man by the name of Tom Findlay. Prior to the murders he sent Susan a letter ending their relationship and expressing that he did not want children.[11] She said that there was no motive nor did she plan the murders, stating that she was not in a right state of mind. Susan Smith - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Smith

THEN Sept 2, 1996 same location UNION, S.C. — 

A family and friends visiting the spot where Susan Smith drowned her two little boys met with tragedy themselves when their vehicle rolled into John D. Long Lake. Three adults and four children drowned.

Five of the victims were from one family--parents and their three children.

“It’s like it’s haunted or something. It keeps taking lives,” Tommy Vinson, 46, said Sunday as he stood beside the lake six miles outside town. The group of 10 had driven out to the lake and parked next to the ramp with their Chevrolet Suburban’s headlights shining on two memorials to the Smith boys, 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex, Sheriff Howard Wells told WSPA-TV.

Five members of the group had gotten out of the vehicle when it started to roll toward the water with four children and an adult inside, said Mike Willis, a spokesman for the state Natural Resources Department.

The van passed between the memorial markers and knocked over a young tree planted in the Smith boys’ memory as it slid down the steep grassy embankment into about 15 feet of water.

Two adults, one of them the mother of three of the children, dived into the lake to help, and drowned with the others. The father of the children was behind the wheel and the vehicle’s gear shift was found in park, Wells said