2-year-old dies in Parkway North crash
The mother of a 2-year-old girl who died early Thursday in a car crash on the Parkway North said the child was on her way home with her father, but she did not know from where or why the youngster was not in a car seat.
“No clue. I put her in one every day,” Caitlyn Breitmos, 26, of West View, said Thursday. “They were coming home. I was at work. She was with her father.”
Ms. Breitmos said she did not know where her daughter and her father, Tyrek Jefferson, were coming from at 12:55 a.m., when Pennsylvania State Police say the vehicle with the child, Saryiah Jefferson, stopped in the left lane, backed up and was struck from behind by another car.
The accident happened on northbound Interstate 279 in Ross near the Perrysville Avenue exit.
“We speculate that maybe he passed the exit and wanted to get off at the exit,” said Trooper Melinda S. Bondarenka, state police spokeswoman.
State police said 24-year-old Taylor Jefferson was driving with 22year-old Tyrek as passenger. Neither the men nor the toddler wore a seat belt. The girl was in the backseat, but there was no car seat in the vehicle, the trooper said.
Asked if the child would have survived had she been properly restrained, Trooper Bondarenka
said: “We're thinking that, yes, she would probably still be here today.”
“It's all up in the air right now,” Ms. Breitmos said of what led up to the crash. “Tyrek wasn't driving. Someone else was.”
It was not clear what relationship there was between Taylor and Tyrek Jefferson, and “it hasn't been confirmed whether they're related or not," Trooper Bondarenka said.
The trooper said she didn't have the vehicles' speeds available. In talking with investigators, she said she “didn't get into the specifics” of any possible impairment, but said Taylor Jefferson would be subject to a blood test, which is standard in this situation.
Police said Daniel White, 21, the driver of the other vehicle, also was taken to the hospital. He was wearing a seat belt, according to police.
Ms. Breitmos, who said she is a manager at a McDonald’s on McKnight Road, said she last saw Saryiah at 4 p.m. when she left for work. She learned of the crash 10 hours later.
"I didn’t find out until 2 o'clock in the morning when a cop came knocking at my door,” Ms. Breitmos said.
Saryiah was pronounced dead at 2:38 a.m.
“She was a great kid,” Ms. Breitmos said. “So happy.”
Ms. Breitmos said she has people with her to help her amid a barrage of non-stop phone calls. “I'm not alone. I have people with me. But there’s nothing, there's no coping. I have to cry,” she said. “I'm in shock."
The crash closed the northbound lanes for four hours.