A Monroeville woman who died after she was hit by a shuttle bus in Oakland Thursday was a retired Air Force officer, according to family members.
Retired Lt. Col. Mary “Jeanne” Flaherty, 76, was struck in the 3400 block of Terrace Street around 3:30 p.m., the Allegheny County medical examiner’s office said Friday.
Lt. Col. Flaherty served in Korea and in various military posts throughout the U.S. during her 27-year career, providing services in logistics, supply, and communications. She retired in 1997, her family said.
According to her sister, attorney Susan L.Q. Flaherty, of Washington, D.C., the Pittsburgh native served "honorably" in the military. It was one of her "greatest prides," she said.
"She was born on D-Day, the day of the invasion of Europe, so we always joked in the family that she was destined to be in the military," Susan Flaherty said during a phone interview Friday. "[Mary] always wanted to serve early on. As number four of nine daughters, she was one of the sweetest of us all. She's always been in the Pittsburgh area unless she was commissioned elsewhere.”
When first responders arrived at yesterday’s accident scene, they found a nurse performing CPR on Lt. Col. Flaherty, Pittsburgh police spokesman Maurice Matthews said. From the initial investigation, Mr. Matthews said, Lt. Col. Flaherty was struck in the roadway by a UPMC shuttle bus turning left onto Terrace Street from Buffalo Street.
EMS transported her to UPMC Presbyterian hospital in critical condition, where she was pronounced dead at 4:06 p.m., according to the medical examiner’s office.
The driver of the bus stayed at the scene and cooperated with police, according to police.
Police temporarily closed Terrace Street between Chesterfield Road and Darragh Street while the city’s Collision Investigation Unit processed the scene. The UPMC shuttle bus was moved from the scene around 5:36 p.m. The bus had stopped in the center of the road and appeared to be in mid-turn onto Terrace Street.
Once the bus was moved, one sneaker could be seen in the middle of the roadway near the intersection of Buffalo and Terrace. A police officer collected the sneaker in a brown paper bag.
The Pittsburgh fire department also responded to the scene around 5:55 p.m. Terrace Street was shortly reopened to traffic around 6 p.m.
There is no marked crosswalk at the intersection where the bus tried to turn left onto Terrace Street. A crosswalk can be seen one block down at the intersection of Terrace Street and Chesterfield Road as well as at the intersection of Terrace Street and Darragh Street one block in the other direction.
According to state law, when traffic-control signals are “not in place or not in operation, the driver of a vehicle shall yield the right-of-way to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within any marked crosswalk or within any unmarked crosswalk at an intersection.”
Lt. Col. Flaherty graduated from Turtle Creek High School in 1962. She never married, relatives said.
In a written statement, UPMC officials said the fatal crash is a “tragedy for our community.”
“Our thoughts and deepest sympathies are with the family of the deceased and with all who witnessed this terrible event,” the statement said. “Pittsburgh Police are leading the investigation and have our full cooperation.”
Thursday’s fatal pedestrian crash comes after a University of Pittsburgh student died in January after she was struck by a Port Authority bus on Fifth Avenue in Oakland.
Both cases are among over three dozen pedestrian accidents in that area in recent years, including 10 cases involving Port Authority buses, according to a review of accident statistics from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and Port Authority.
Lauren Lee: llee@post-gazette.com; @lauren_llee.
First Published: September 17, 2020, 8:47 p.m.
Updated: September 18, 2020, 5:01 p.m.