(Photo: DAMIAN GILETTO/THE NEWS JOURNAL)
Guardswoman dies in Del. 273 crash
A
woman initially reported by police to have been killed in a crash just
before 7 a.m. Tuesday near New Castle was revived on the way to the
hospital but died hours later, state police said.
After
initially announcing her death, Master Cpl. Jeffrey R. Hale said, police
“learned that through advanced lifesaving efforts provided to the
victim by New Castle County paramedics, she has been admitted to the
Christiana Hospital in extremely critical condition.”
Joann
M. Hess, 29, of Smyrna, who suffered multiple blunt force trauma in the
crash, succumbed to her injuries at 10:19 a.m., Hale said.
The
crash was the first fatality this year at Christiana Road (Del. 273)
and Airport Road, an intersection that area residents and business
people call a dangerous one with too frequent crashes.
The
Delaware State Police Collision Reconstruction Unit continues to
investigate the crash, Hale said, but charges are not expected to be
filed.
Reported at 6:58 a.m., the crash occurred as Hess
was turning left from eastbound Christiana Road (Del. 273) onto
northbound Airport Road, Hale said.
Hess, a staff
sergeant in the Delaware Air National Guard, was on her was to work at
the New Castle Air National Guard Base when the incident occurred, said
Army Lt. Col. Len Gratteri, a Guard spokesman.
She drove
into the path of a westbound truck driven by John C. Rowell 3rd, 26, of
Wilmington, who was not injured in the crash, Hale said.
Liz
Brown of Bear saw the woman’s car was stopped on eastbound Christiana
Road, waiting to turn left onto Airport Road, as she approached the
intersection on her way to work at Amazon, along Del. 273 closer to New
Castle.
As Brown cleared the intersection, she said, “I heard the truck slam on its brakes and I heard the impact.
“Then
I looked in the rear view mirror and saw the truck pushing the car into
the sign at the Dash-In,” she said. “It looked like the truck
broadsided the car and couldn’t stop.”
The front of the
truck had hit the right side of the car, Hale said. The left side of the
car then hit a pedestrian sign and went into the parking lot at the
Shell gas station in the 200 block of Christiana Road. The left side of
the car then hit a street light pole and the gas station sign, he said.
Traffic at the intersection was affected for about three hours as state police investigated and wreckage was cleared.
Tuesday’s crash hit Shakeeb Mahasneh hard, he said, because “she was coming here to my 7-Eleven.”
“She gets her coffee here every morning,” the business owner said.
“Very polite, very nice,” he said, adding she usually arrived wearing her Air Guard uniform.