PORTLAND (AP) – The families of three women and four children killed in a high-speed highway accident on Mother’s Day struggled Tuesday to understand why a woman who lost her driver’s license six years ago was behind the wheel.

Hope Gagnon, whose license was suspended in 1998, was driving more than 90 mph in the breakdown lane on Interstate 95 when the rented SUV clipped another car, went airborne and slammed into trees, police said. Kelley Armstrong and Danielle St. Paulin were both in the vehicle and had valid driver’s licenses.

“It was supposed to be a day trip, up and back,” St. Paulin’s mother, Shirley Adams said, her face and eyes red from tears. “I don’t understand why she was behind the wheel when she had two licensed driver with her.”

Adams, whose kitchen was busy with visitors, has grappled with a rush of questions since the accident, relying on her grandchildren for answers to where their mother was going.

The trip was planned so Gagnon could rendezvous with a man she met on the Internet, Adams said. All but St. Paulin’s children came along because the man, who lived somewhere near Canada, said he had a trampoline for them to use.

Investigators said witnesses reported seeing the Explorer pulled over to the side of the road two miles before the accident site so Gagnon could drive.

Killed in the accident were Armstrong, 28, and her 4-year-old son; Gagnon, 29, and her three children ranging from age 4 to 8; and St. Paulin, 29.

Two women were thrown from the SUV, and one child was found in a tree. The other four occupants – a woman and three children – died inside. Troopers found two of the bodies beneath the SUV.

State police investigators on Tuesday continued putting together the accident scene and had determined there were no mechanical problems with the relatively new SUV, said Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety.

McCausland also said that though there is little doubt who driving at the time of the accident, investigators plan this week to begin examining the vehicle’s interior for evidence of what might have caused the accident.

Armstrong rented the 2004 Ford Explorer from Hertz in Portland, about three hours before the accident 10 miles west of Bangor in south-central Maine.

Paula Stifter, a Hertz spokeswoman, said company policy requires customers who plan on having children as passengers to also rent child safety seats. She would not say whether such seats were rented because of privacy issues.

But state police investigators said they found no child seats in the car.

“I do not know whether she told Hertz that children would be driving in the car,” McCausland said.

The crash was the deadliest on a Maine public road since seven occupants of a car were killed when it was broadsided and run over by a tractor-trailer in Richmond in 1958. The state’s worst crash happened on a privately owned logging road in September 2002, when 14 migrant workers died in a bridge accident.

Sunday’s accident has been hard on Adams, who will have temporary custody of St. Paulin’s four children who range in age from 15 months to 13 years until social workers decide where they should go.

“I have my moments when I break down and I have my moments being strong,” said Adams, who knew all the passengers in the SUV. “But my main concern is these kids. They are the ones who lost their mother.”

AP-ES-05-11-04 1700EDT