A woman who died Thursday after her SUV plunged into the icy Monongahela River from the Parkway East lost control of the vehicle, struck a snowbank and plummeted 120 feet into the water, police said.
Jacinta Stevens, 31, veered across three lanes of traffic as she was driving outbound on Interstate 376 when she lost control of her Ford Explorer, according to Pennsylvania State Police.
Her vehicle hit a nearly 6-foot-tall snowbank, traveled over a concrete barrier and plummeted into the river, police said.
The accident happened in the late afternoon in Pittsburgh’s Bluff neighborhood, south of UPMC Mercy Hospital.
Three divers from Pittsburgh’s River Rescue broke through surface ice about 5 inches thick, then pulled Stevens, 31, of Pittsburgh’s West End, from the driver’s seat, authorities said. The divers used a basket to pull her out of the water.
They resuscitated Stevens at the scene. She later died at UPMC Presbyterian.
Emily Bourne, a Pittsburgh police spokeswoman, said the crash happened about 4:30 p.m. State police said troopers were dispatched at 5:14 p.m.
About 50 first responders from the city’s EMS, police and fire bureaus responded to the crash scene, Bourne said.
Stevens was an employee of the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh, according to Molly Onufer, a spokeswoman for the mayor’s office.
Stevens worked for the authority for the past two months as a housing specialist, according to Michelle Sandidge, the housing authority’s chief community affairs officer
“The HACP staff is in a state of shock and grief. Ms. Stevens was not in the office Wednesday and Thursday as she was on requested paid leave,” Sandidge said in an emailed statement. “We send our collective prayers out to her family, and we ask everyone for patience as the details of this sad and tragic accident unfold.”
Many details remained unclear Friday to authorities — what caused Stevens to swerve across the highway, whether the crash was related to winter weather or a medical incident, or why a “lower-than-usual” volume of motorists called 911 to report the crash.
There are many traffic cameras posted along the Parkway East, but they are live-streamed and don’t record video, Trooper Rocco Gagliardi said. Some cameras that did record footage captured Stevens driving on the highway but not the crash itself.
A diver who plunged into the Mon to help search for other victims Thursday said cold river temperatures can start to affect the human body “within a couple minutes” of being submerged.
“Your core temperature stays pretty warm — but your hands? You lose a lot of dexterity,” said Eric Capets, a Pittsburgh EMS paramedic and River Rescue dive instructor who raced from his Squirrel Hill home to the scene Thursday afternoon.
The Allegheny River had dropped to 31 degrees Thursday afternoon near Sharpsburg, which is the closest reading to the crash, according to the National Weather Service in Moon.
The outdoor temperatures in the region lingered around 15 degrees around the time of the crash, meteorologist Jason Frazier told TribLive. Breezy winds made it feel closer to 1 or 2 degrees.
Capets said he wasn’t intimidated by the frigid air — or the ice-cold Mon. Divers undergo more than 800 hours of training, including time in icy conditions, to join the city’s River Rescue squad. One diver Thursday suffered a minor wrist injury.
“We were thinking about one thing: rescuing the victim,” Capets said inside River Rescue’s boathouse underneath the Roberto Clemente Bridge. “Everything else, it leaves your mind.”
Police said they are checking to see if Stevens had alcohol or drugs in her system at the time of the crash, which is standard protocol, Gagliardi said. Results could take between three and eight weeks.
It is unclear when divers will be able to salvage the SUV from the ice-covered Mon, Gagliardi said.
Troopers hope the damage to Stevens’ vehicle will reveal clues about what led to the crash.
They also will look for computer and dashboard-camera data.
“Time is crucial. The tows are ready to go … but the tows don’t have a diving team,” Gagliardi said. “The sooner, the better. But there’s a lot of t’s that need crossed and a lot of i’s that need dotted.”
A similar incident occurred on the Parkway East in January 1984, according to published reports from the time.
David Tuma, a 44-year-old author and electrical engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University, was killed when his Volkswagen Rabbit skidded on ice on the Parkway East and crashed over two traffic barriers. The car cruised down a 50-foot embankment, hit a tree and then slid into the Mon.
Gagliardi said the second incident doesn’t define that stretch of the Parkway East as problematic or crash-prone.
“We cover a lot of interstates, a lot of streets,” he said Friday. “There are a lot of hot spots. But I wouldn’t call two accidents in 40 years a trouble area.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated Jacinta Stevens’ employer.