Grandma driving kids to amusement park dies as tire crashes windshield | US News

A grandmother was driving her family to an amusement park when a tire flew from another vehicle through her windshield and killed her.

Tammy Maria Parsons, 53, was traveling eastbound on Interstate 64 to take her fiancé Joseph Palumbo and four children to Busch Gardens’ Howl-O-Scream event, WTVR reported.

‘A tire flew off someone else’s car from the westbound lane and struck my aunts vehicle,’ wrote Parsons’ niece Brittany Tedder on a GoFundMe page for her. ‘The tire hit my aunt head on, and we believed instantly killed her.’

Tedder wrote that ‘thankfully, no one else in the car was hurt physically but had to witness the tragedy of Tammy being taken from them’.

Parsons was driving a Ford Explorer around 12.22pm on Sunday when a loose tire from a Jeep Renegade entered the eastbound lanes and hit the driver’s side of her SUV, Virginia State Police told WRIC. She suffered life-threatening injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene in Williamsburg.

Her fiancé, her twin daughters Sarah and Skylar, and two grandchildren Julian and Gia whom the couple had adopted, were not hurt.

Busch Gardens in Parsons’ hometown of Williamsburg was one of her favorite places to go with her children and grandkids.

‘She was the backbone to her family; her children and grandchildren were her biggest accomplishment and greatest joy in life,’ states her obituary.

‘Tammy would light up any room that she walked into and would often make people laugh with her sense of humor.’

Most of Parsons’ family and friends described her as ‘a selfless, kind-hearted, and courageous woman with the biggest heart who would always put others before herself’, it states.

Her viewing will take place on Sunday at Vincent Funeral Home in Providence Forge.

The GoFundMe donations will go toward helping Palumbo and her children with her funeral expenses and ongoing costs. It had raised more than $4,100 as of Friday afternoon.

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