Mom recalls daughter killed in hit-and-run
‘She was so happy,’ Nela Zanter said of daughter Tammy.
Tammy Zanter liked to walk from her new house on Steel Street to the docks and just sit for a while in the peace and quiet. That’s what she was doing Saturday night when, on her way home, she was struck and killed by a vehicle as she was crossing Front Street in East Toledo.
“I still can’t believe it,” said her mother, Nela Zanter.
According to police records, an accurate description of the vehicle could not be determined, but it possibly had front-end damage.
Police are continuing their investigation, department spokesman Lt. Kevan Toney said.
Since she’d just been out for a walk, her mother said, she didn’t have any identification. But Tammy Zanter’s neighbor saw the lights from the ambulance and went to the site of the accident. He told emergency crews who she was and called her daughter, who was at work. Word spread through the family that Tammy Zanter had been in a car accident.
“We were assuming she was driving a car,” Nela Zanter said.
It wasn’t until family members arrived at Mercy Health St. Vincent Medical Center that they learned it had been a hit-and-run — and that Tammy Zanter didn’t make it.
“She was my daughter, and I loved her,” Nela Zanter said.
In the hospital, her legs were broken, and her face was scratched up.
“She looked terrible,” she said.
Her death is a shock, her mother said. She was only 45 and had three daughters, two of whom are teenagers. The family planned to have a picnic on Sunday, and on Saturday, before she died, Tammy Zanter called her mother to tell her who was planning to be there.
Nela Zanter didn’t get to talk to her that night. Tammy Zanter had left a message, and her mother called her back but didn’t hear from her before the accident.
“She kind of kept to herself. Sometimes she didn’t tell us everything,” Nela Zanter said. “That’s when I heard from her the most, when she was happy.”
Tammy Zanter graduated from Macomber High School before it closed in 1991, Nela Zanter said.
“She was the last student to walk across the stage and graduate (from Macomber),” she said.
When she was young, she would get into trouble, her mother said. A lot.
She had her father’s sense of humor, which meant she always had a comeback.
Once, Nela Zanter remembered, Tammy Zanter was in trouble for something, and her mother said, “What am I going to do with you?”
Her daughter responded, “Give me a credit card and send me to the mall.”
Nela Zanter laughed in response.
“She was always up to something,” she said.
Tammy Zanter recently moved into the house she was living in on Steel Street with her boyfriend. Nela Zanter and other family members were helping her fill the house with new furniture. She also just started a new job with a trucking company.
“She was so happy this past month or so,” Nela Zanter said.