In the weeks after she moved from living in her car to a room at the Brookside Motel, Debbrah Marie Pesce impressed her neighbors with her willingness to give back to others despite struggling with homelessness herself.
An apparently impatient person driving a late 80s or early 90s Ford F-Series pickup truck killed Pesce while she crossed the street on her bicycle in Monroe the day after Christmas. The person driving fled the scene.
Pesce was 53.
Christopher Johnson, the manager of nearby Brookside Motel, said he and tenants were shaken by her death because they had seen her try so hard in recent weeks to lift herself out of homelessness.
Johnson said Pesce had moved into the hotel a couple weeks ago after living in her car for some time. While looking for a job and trying to find cleaning work, he said she would help paint the motel and volunteer at Next Step Community Resource Center, a faith-based, non-profit that serves homeless and low-income residents in the Skykomish River Valley. Johnson said he remembers her saying she helped with Next Step’s after-school children’s program.
“She was always such a sweet lady – she had nothing but she gave all that she could,” Johnson said.
Police say a car was stopped on Highway 2 at Old Owen Rd to allow Pesce to cross. The person driving the pickup behind the stopped car started revving its engine, then pulled quickly around the stopped car, striking Pesce. Pesce was thrown into the street where two other cars hit her.
Anyone with information about the pickup driver should call the Monroe Police Department at 360-794-6300 or their anonymous tip line at 360-863-4600.
Condolences to Pesce’s friends and family.
Comments
8 responses to “‘She had nothing, but she gave all that she could’”
So sad, this lady had a rotten hand dealt to her in life and it got worse.
Is fleeing the scene after hitting a bicyclist or pedestrian becoming the norm? Very disturbing. Also makes me wonder if stopping for folks walking or on bikes, when the driver does not have to, is a good idea. When there are other vehicles involved, seems things can get more complicated and confusing. When a pedestrian or cyclist, I would rather wait for a normal opening to cross.
It’s not clear who had the green light.
But either way, if a car is stopped in an adjacent lane for any reason, everyone else needs to stop. You never know what might be going on, and stopping is simply the safest way to deal with such a situation. A common example is when someone (regardless of mode) is trying to cross or make a left on a road with two or more lanes traveling in the same direction. The person in the curb lane stops to let them out, but the person in the second lane does not. This is a huge cause of some of the most dangerous types of collisions (t-bone crashes). Reducing these is a big reason for road diets (but that’s another conversation that’s not really relevant here).
Very true. This should apply to everyone, not just cars. I cycle down 9th between Westlake and Denny, where there are quite a few pedestrians that attempt to cross. I’ll slow down or stop to let them go and more times than I’d like to admit, another cyclist will come screaming past me and swerve around the pedestrian crossing.
Naturally, I’ll usually catch up to them at either Denny or Mercer, depending on the direction and give them an earful. Usually they reply with horrible excuses like “I was just conserving momentum” or “I gave them enough room”. To this I usually respond with something along the lines of how they are destroying the credibility of cyclists in addition to other things I’m usually not proud of.
Given how serious the penalties for DUI are, now, drunks might be thinking it would be better to risk getting ticketed for leaving the scene of an accident instead.
Sad and angry.
These roads and these cars and their drivers need to stop killing people.
I’ll pray for justice.
I thought I read in the Times that the pickup was stolen — sad that the thief was so impatient that he/she added murder to car theft.
[…] Source: Seattle Bike Blog Com (http://seattlebikeblog.com/2013/01/02/she-had-nothing-but-she-gave-all-that-she-could/) […]