A 25-year-old mother who survived a car crash on Sunday morning has died after she went back to the vehicle to collect her purse, police have reported.
Brittany Leith, a mother of a three-year-old girl, was left uninjured after her Nissan hit the center and flipped over onto its roof on Long Island’s southern State Parkway.
After she clambered out of the wreckage through a window, she returned back to the car to collect her belongings.
As she began to walk back to her vehicle, she was hit and instantly killed by another car on the highway.
According to the New York Post, a police car which arrived minutes later was also struck by a passing car and a state trooper was taken to hospital to be treated for minor injuries.
Leith worked at a beauty salon in North Babylon as she worked towards getting a beauty license.
Her 73-year-old grandmother Claire Hansen told Newsday she doesn’t know how they will break the news to Leith’s daughter.
‘We have to tell this little baby, this little doll,’ Hansen said. ‘How do we tell this little girl? . . . She keeps saying, “Where’s Mommy? Where’s Mommy?” It’s not supposed to happen this way.’
The road remained closed until 11.30am.
Anyone with information is asked to contact Troop L. Headquarters at 631-756-3300.
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