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Tracy Morgan critically hurt in accident

Morgan, whose films include The Longest Yard and Rio, remains in the hospital’s intensive care unit.

Actor and comedian Tracy Morgan was critically injured on Saturday after a tractor-trailer rammed into his chauffeured limousine bus, setting off a chain-reaction crash that left one member of his entourage dead and two others seriously hurt.

A truck driver was charged with death by auto in connection to the crash, prosecutors said. Middlesex County prosecutors said 35-year-old Kevin Roper, of Jonesboro, Georgia, also faces four counts of assault by auto stemming from the crash.

Morgan, the former Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock cast member, was returning from a stand-up comedy show in Delaware when his Mercedes limo bus carrying seven people overturned on the New Jersey Turnpike near Cranbury Township at about 1am, state police Sgt. 1^st Class Greg Williams said.

Morgan, whose films include The Longest Yard and Rio, remains in the hospital’s intensive care unit.

“His family is now with him and he is receiving excellent care,” spokesman Lewis Kay said in a statement. “We don’t anticipate much of a change in his condition today but will provide a further update once more information becomes available.”

Morgan, a New York City native, joined SNL in 1996 and was on the sketch-comedy programme for seven years before leaving to star in The Tracy Morgan Show in 2003. That show lasted just one season. In 2006, Morgan found a long-running role on NBC’s hit show 30 Rock, which was created by SNL co-star Tina Fey. He received an Emmy nomination for best supporting actor for 30 Rock in 2009.

Morgan grew up fatherless, one of five siblings, in a blighted section of Brooklyn, where he helped raise and support the family. He once called his gift for being funny “a defence mechanism” for his miserable circumstances. In recent years, he has struggled with alcoholism and drunken driving arrests. He had a successful kidney transplant in late 2010. Morgan has three grown sons by a previous marriage and a daughter, Maven Sonae, born last July to his fiancee, Megan Wollover.