Deadly storms hit Arkansas

Arkansas, USA
Image: An unidentified insurance adjuster looks over thunderstorm damage in Kansas City, Mo., on Friday. A powerful storm system packing tornadoes and heavy winds roared across the nation's midsection early Friday, killing at least seven people in Arkansas including a teenager crushed by a tree while she slept (Orlin Wagner/Associated Press)

DAMASCUS, Ark. — Violent storms rolling across the nation's midsection unleashed tornadoes, high winds and hail in four states and killed seven people in Arkansas on Friday, including a teenager who died when a tree fell into her bedroom as she slept.

The storms late Thursday and early Friday ripped off roofs and toppled train cars near Kansas City, Mo.; pelted parts of Oklahoma with hail; and knocked over tents at a popular open-air market in east Texas. Severe thunderstorms were moving into Kentucky and could make for a wet Kentucky Derby on Saturday.

Greg Carbin, a meteorologist for the national Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., said as many as 25 tornadoes may have cut through stretches of Oklahoma, Arkansas, eastern Kansas and western Missouri.