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Friends remember woman killed in rollover crash
A horrific crash in Spanaway sent a car flying into a house and left a young woman dead and a young man fighting for his life early this morning.
SPANAWAY, Wash. - A horrific crash in Spanaway sent a car flying into a house and left a young woman dead and a young man fighting for his life early this morning.
It happened near the intersection of 225th St Court E and 46th Ave East.
Neighbors believe that the car hit a dip further up the road, then landed, losing control and veering into a ditch where the car hit a stump and went airborne, flying over the road and hitting a tree, scarring it about six feet up the trunk, before hitting the house.
Taylor Getz and other friends gathered at the site of the early morning tragedy to remember Destiny, who was the driver and was killed in the crash.
"I just miss her so much. I just seen her a couple weeks ago, and we were supposed to hang out again," said Getz.
"She was just a good person," said Kylie Randall, Destiny's friend.
"We really miss her. She will always be here with us," said LaTrontah Pettus, another one of Destiny's friends who had stopped at the site to leave flowers and pay their respects.
Friends say that Destiny was in the car with her brother at the time of the crash, on a street that she has driven hundreds of times because it's on her typical drive home.
"She was close to home," said Pettus.
Getz says Destiny was one of her best friends. She says the two made some special memories when they celebrated her 16th birthday together. She says one of the things she'll miss most about her friend is her laugh.
"She is just really the most amazing and kind-hearted person and she always had done something for every single person. She was the funniest person I know and I cannot get her laugh out of my head," said Getz.
Al Medina, the homeowner whose house was hit, said it was a very difficult day. Not only because a car flew into the house, damaging it, but because someone died. He spent the day with the help of a friend trying to secure a tarp to the roof.
He said he heard a muffled "explosion" when the crash occurred. He and his wife were sleeping in a back bedroom, so they were not injured. Although he didn't want to do a recorded interview, he showed FOX 13 the damage within the home and the area where the roof had been pushed up an inch in a spare bedroom.
Other neighbors who rushed to help the crash victims described what they saw when they approached the vehicle.
"It didn’t even look like a car. It looked like a ball of metal," said David King, a neighbor. "I saw this movement, and I realized there’s another person here and they are pinned in between these seats. Then I heard this male voice say something, like you know, ‘I need to get out of here.'"
Investigators have said that they believe the car may have been going around 100 mph. It's something that King also believes based on the damage to the vehicle, with the engine pushed all the way into the passenger compartment.
"It didn’t even look like a car on the inside. The front seats were pushed all the way to the back seats," said King.
Local residents say the road has been the location of numerous crashes before, but the loss here is still shocking.
"This road is pretty dangerous and people do fly down it a lot, but it’s unbelievable that it could happen to such a kind-hearted person that was loved by so many people," said Getz.
Pierce County Sheriff's Department spokesperson Darren Moss says firefighters reported that it appeared as if Destiny wasn't wearing a seatbelt, while the young man she was with was wearing his. Friends say they are hoping to hold a vigil for Destiny in the coming days.