Danielle Jackman’s hand was still warm Wednesday when a stranger reached into what was left of the Churchill woman’s car — its hood smashed and doors mangled in a five-car wreck — to grab hold of it.
Jackman’s face was covered in so much blood, one couldn’t tell if she was a man or a woman.
It didn’t matter. Instinct had kicked in. And she didn’t want Jackman to die alone.
“She was still breathing. So I just held her hand and started praying,” Sumer Smith, 47, of Amherst, Ohio, told TribLive on Thursday. “I was just praying out loud, asking God to intervene in this situation, to make his presence known.
“And I was praying so she knew in that moment she was not alone.”
Jackman, who worked for 25 years just blocks from where she was killed, was one of two people who died Wednesday in a violent crash near the Fort Duquesne Bridge.
Witnesses said a black SUV zipped through afternoon traffic on Route 65, striking concrete barriers and other vehicles before flipping over the side of the ramp and plummeting about 30 feet to the road below.
The man ejected from the SUV — Michael Smith, 52, of Sheraden — died instantly. First responders rushed Jackman, 58, to UPMC Mercy hospital. She died there within an hour.
Good Samaritans just passing through
Smith and her husband, Josh, a police chaplain, were driving a rented Nissan Rogue SUV to their Cleveland-area home when they stopped for lunch Wednesday afternoon in Pittsburgh.
The couple were returning from Washington, D.C., where they met with government leaders about providing aid to Israel. Smith volunteers for a Christian Zionist organization active in Ohio.
Smith doesn’t remember what highway they were driving on around 3 p.m. when the other Smith’s black SUV roared toward them.
“It came out of nowhere,” Smith said. “My husband looked in the rear-view mirror and there was nothing — no one. Then, all of a sudden, he was right behind us.”
The couple didn’t see the SUV flip over the ramp’s 2½-foot concrete barrier — or fall to the roadway below. But rattled by the sound of the crash, they stopped their car — then Smith ran to help.
Smith, a Christian who grew up outside Charlotte, N.C., wasn’t the only person who darted toward Jackman’s vehicle, its metal frame pinned and crumpled against concrete.
Another passerby tries to help
Nicholas Hunter, a South Boston native now living in McKees Rocks, ran over, too.
The first thing Hunter noticed was the smell of gasoline draining from Jackman’s car. He looked around for sparks or live wires, fearing a fire. Seeing none, he lunged toward Jackman’s car: “My thought was I just want to help if I can.”
He reached behind the tatters of a deployed airbag that covered Jackman’s driver’s side window and tried, unsuccessfully, to free her. He tried the passenger door. Again, no luck.
Feeling helpless, Hunter ran toward the concrete barrier where Smith’s SUV had plummeted to the road below.
“Where’s the cops? Where’s the cops?” he recalls screaming.
“I think it took (first responders) about 5 or 6 minutes” to get to the crash scene, Hunter said. “But it felt like an eternity.”
Hunter occasionally paused alongside Smith. Inside the vehicle, the crash victim was silent and still.
“She never said a word; she never responded, as far as I know,” Hunter said.
Smith remained undeterred.
“We knew it was not good, but I still held her hand until someone came with the Jaws of Life,” Smith said, referring to a specialized saw used to free accident victims. “As soon as they pulled up, I just stepped back.”
Smith arrived at her Ohio home around 6 p.m. She logged onto Facebook and tried to reach someone from Jackman’s family. As of Thursday afternoon, nobody had replied.
For that, Smith said she’s holding onto hope.
“If it were my family member, I’d want them to know she was not alone,” Smith said. “I don’t feel anybody should be alone in that moment.”
‘Dani’ remembered
Jackman — “Dani” to those who knew her — was mourned Thursday for her warmth and emotional depth.
She started working 25 years ago for the community health and social-services provider Pittsburgh Mercy. She spent her entire tenure with the company at its Reedsdale Street location in the city’s North Shore neighborhood, a stone’s throw from Acrisure Stadium and Route 65.
“Dani faithfully served Pittsburgh Mercy,” Emilee Howells Cribbs, a spokeswoman for the nonprofit, said in a prepared statement. “Throughout the years, Dani touched countless lives through her compassion, dedication and the relationships she built over more than two decades of service.”
When Jackman wasn’t working for Pittsburgh Mercy, most recently as an intervention specialist, she worked part time cooking at area bars.
Jackman spent eight years cooking part time at Duke’s Rodi Lounge in Penn Hills, a friend said.
In January, she took to the kitchen and the grill at Smitty’s Place, a newly opened bar on McKeesport’s Walnut Street.
David Faynor, the bar owner who just opened the establishment five months ago, called Jackman a staple at the bar’s Taco Night on Tuesdays who was passionate about the Pittsburgh Pirates.
“Dani became a huge part of the heart and soul of Smitty’s Place,” Faynor told TribLive. “More than anything, Dani will be remembered for her kindness, her humor, her creativity in the kitchen, and the impact she made on everyone fortunate enough to know her.”
Smitty’s Place, its shiny-new red emblem at odds with the muted tones of its brick exterior, was quiet around noon Thursday.
A woman from a nearby busing company grabbed lunch, sitting alone at the bar.
Much of the bar’s staff and friends were at a funeral for a regular who died last week: Scott Petras, 50, a cement finisher from McKeesport.
But Jackman was there in spirit, they said.
After a “Jeopardy!” episode wrapped up on the narrow bar’s five, wall-mounted TV screens, a newscast came on: two killed in Fort Duquesne Bridge crash.
“Dani was an amazing individual,” said Faynor, Smitty’s Place owner.
The bar will celebrate Jackman’s life with a lantern release memorial May 15. The event starts at 7 p.m.