BY TED SHOCKLEY, Eastern Shore Post —
Duane Lee Turner looked around for his girlfriend and her daughter in the moments after the vehicle struck them.
The 6-year-old child, who was riding a bicycle, was injured and lying nearby.
His girlfriend, 26-year-old Erika Cherrelle Bailey, had been knocked approximately 60 feet east on Nocks Landing Road during the Wednesday, April 12, incident.
She was killed on impact, police said. It was a sunny, warm afternoon, and still an hour from sunset.
“We were just taking a walk,” said Turner the morning of Monday, April 17, while sitting on the front step of his home.
Turner and the child were hospitalized after the crash. He had returned home and the child’s condition was improving, he said.
Flowers had been set on the road shoulder where the vehicle hit them. Another set of flowers was placed where Bailey died.
In the aftermath, a state police spokeswoman said the “investigation of the crash has taken much longer” because of the complexity of the investigation, among other factors.
The spokeswoman said the Accomack County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office will make the final determination on whether charges are to be brought against the driver.
However, an online petition on the website www.change.org that advocated bringing charges against the driver had drawn 1,500 signatures in just two days.
The driver, Jessica Greenley Waterfield, 36, of Atlantic, was headed east in a 2021 Honda Pilot sport utility vehicle with a 3-year-old passenger. Neither was injured, according to state police.
Neither alcohol nor speed were “contributing factors,” in the crash, according to state police.
The incident took place one-tenth of a mile from a 25 mph zone and about three-tenths of a mile from the Nocks Landing Road intersection with Atlantic Road, near the post office and Wolff’s Sandwich Shoppe.
The narrow road, which is lined with driveways, widens significantly as it approaches Atlantic Road.
“I don’t know how (the driver) didn’t see us on a straight road,” said Turner, who wept as he spoke of the crash.
Turner also contradicted state police reports that they were teaching the child how to ride a bicycle.
“She had known how to ride a while,” he said.
The crash happened about 15 feet from Turner’s driveway.
He said he had noticed the vehicle approaching from a distance.
“When you walk out in the road, you always look both ways,” he said.
Soon afterward, he said he warned the woman and child that the vehicle was approaching.
“There’s a car coming,” he said, before it hit them.
