Driver charged in auto-ped fatality

AUSTIN (KXAN) - Austin police on Monday charged a 59-year-old woman with intoxication manslaughter in the fatal auto-pedestrian crash that occurred on Guadalupe Sunday night .

Linda Dianne Woodman was identified as the driver of a silver Lexus SUV police said was involved in the accident Sunday night around 7 p.m.

Witnesses told KXAN the vehicle was heading south on Guadalupe near 31st Street when it hit another car, slammed into a bus stop and then barreled down the street, eventually crashing between a light pole and dry cleaners sign.

"We see this car just screeching down the road going the wrong way and just smash into these poles," said witness Nathan Lanham, who helped Woodman out of her mangled SUV. "She was coherent, but she just seemed kind of dumbfounded like she didn't know what was going on and I didn't know what was going on either because I didn't know there was people seriously injured just 100 yards down the road."

A man later identified as Dik Van Meerten, 61, and a woman identified as 21-year-old Sarah Lee Parker were hit by the SUV. Van Meerten died. Parker was in stable condition at UMC Brackenridge.

"She's thankful she's alive. She is," said Ryan Miller, Parker's brother-in-law. "She's upset that this happened to her. She was an innocent person walking down the sidewalk. She had just come out of the Wheatsville Co-op to do a little grocery shopping. She actually saw the car coming towards her from what I understand and was able to try and jump out of the way but obviously wasn't completely successful."

Woodman declined medical treatment and is now in police custody.

Police said Woodman told the an officer at the scene that she thought she hit a pothole and lost control of her car. She also said that her brakes were not responding.

She told the officer she had been in the hospital for 'fainting' and had been discharged that afternoon. She was wearing plastic hospital bracelets. She told police she had been given Morphine and Percocet.

Police said that alcohol was not suspected to be the intoxicant and that a drug-recognition expert thought the intoxication was due to effects of a central nervous system depressant and a narcotic analgesic.

Meanwhile, business owners are cleaning up the mess left behind by the accident.

Outside of Wheatsville-Co-Op, the operations manager is sweeping up glass and parts of a tail light.  The managers there did not have any comment on the accident.  A few flower pots were shattered but the building did not have structural damage. 

Keith Newberry, owner of Four Seasons Cleaners, will likely have to take his sign down after it was mangled in the crash.

He said people drive "crazy" in the area.  Nearly a decade ago, a driver took out the awning on his property.

"Other than people constantly cutting the intersection or driving through our parking lot or skip a light, nothing like this before," said Newberry.

Newberry's vintage sign has a motor in it and it is still rotating the tilted sign.  He does have safety concerns and has called sign companies to come out.  He has also contacted his insurance agency but they are out of the office today.

It is likely his sign will become a fixed sign and no longer rotate.

Woodman's neighbors said her home is generally quiet and they rarely see her.