Feb. 8, 2007 — Kathleen Hewson, 27, of St. John died Wednesday after she was pinned between her vehicle and a truck when her small Suzuki SUV rolled down an incline near her apartment, Police Department spokeswoman Shawna Richards said Thursday.
"The brake may not have been engaged," Richards said Thursday, adding that Hewson died around 8 p.m. Wednesday at Myrah Keating Smith Community Health Center.
She said police were called to the scene at Estate Carolina in Coral Bay at around 6:30 p.m. Richards said the woman's landlord discovered the accident.
Hewson's next-door neighbor, Sue Frederickson, said she heard a series of loud noises.
She said it appears that Hewson tried to stop her Suzuki Samari when it began to slip backwards. "She got pinned between her car and the owner's pickup."
Frederickson said that when she and her husband got to the scene, Hewson was moaning.
She said that it seemed to take the ambulance a long time to come from Cruz Bay, so someone called the Coral Bay fire station. She said the fire trucks arrived first, then the police and St. John Rescue, and finally the ambulance.
Richards said Hewson was a Massachusetts native. Hewson worked as a waitress, bartender and hostess at Aqua Bistro, a restaurant in Cocoloba shopping center in Coral Bay.
"Everyone is distraught and broken at the loss. It's been a very dark day here," Christie Dove, who has three stores in the same shopping center, said Thursday.
Aqua Bistro was closed Thursday.
Dove said this was the second winter season Hewson worked at Aqua Bistro. She said she returned to the states during the summer season.
She called Hewson an amazing spirit and the kind of person who would do anything for anyone who needed it.
Frederickson said it was so sad to see someone so young lose their life in a freak accident.
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