One man was killed and one woman was seriously injured when an allegedly impaired driver struck them while they were changing a flat tire on the side of a highway.
According to local North Carolina outlets FOX 8, WXII, and WFMY, 39-year-old Christopher Hammonds and his fiancée Lisa had pulled over on the side of Highway 29 in Greensboro at around 12:30 a.m. local time on Friday, May 9, to change a flat tire when they were hit by a car that drifted into the shoulder.
According to police, 25-year-old driver Robert Lynn Faison Jr. was impaired when he hit Hammonds and his fiancée’s Jeep Grand Cherokee.
The couple had pulled onto the shoulder of the northbound lane and activated their hazards when Faison allegedly hit them while driving north.
“They were only doing a simple tire blowout. “They were fixing it when a drunk driver swerved over and hit them on the side of the highway,” Hammonds’ sister, Connie Anderson, told WFMY.
According to reports, Hammonds, a father of four, was pronounced dead, while Lisa — whose last name was not disclosed — was taken to a nearby hospital with life-threatening injuries.
Faison was also taken to the hospital with minor injuries, and police told the media that he is now facing five charges: driving while intoxicated, failing to maintain lane control, failing to reduce speed to avoid a collision, felony “serious injury by vehicle,” and felony “death by vehicle.”
Guilford County Schools, the local public school district, informed FOX 8 that the accused driver is a high school science teacher.
In interviews with local media, Hammonds’ relatives revealed how deeply his death has affected their family. They also revealed that Lisa had just finished breast cancer treatment at the time of the crash.
“She’s got many broken bones, collapsed lungs, lacerations to body parts, internally, it’s just a really sad situation,” Anderson was quoted as saying.
Anderson also stated that Hammonds’ children miss him greatly, particularly as his daughter Tiffany prepares to graduate in the coming months.
“[Hammonds] is not gonna be here to be able to watch his daughter here, who’s fixing to walk across the stage [at her graduation],” she told me. “He’s got another one that’s gonna be walking across the stage next year, [and he won’t] even know what it feels like to be a grandfather.”
“His hug is definitely different like no other man, and I’m not gonna get that anymore or hear his voice,” his daughter Tiffany told WFMY.
A GoFundMe set up to help Anderson pay for Hammonds’ funeral expenses has raised nearly $1,000 as of Sunday, May 11, while another GoFundMe set up to support Lisa during her recovery process, which will include physical rehabilitation, has raised more than $2,000 of its $10,000 goal.
Anderson told WFMY that impaired drivers should consider such incidents before getting behind the wheel.
“Drinking and driving, please, for the world out there, think twice,” she pleaded. “In an incident like this, it took the life of someone and seriously injured another.”
