Witness: ‘You’re dragging a body!’ Driver responds: ‘What?’

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, July 11, 2017

By Craig Sailor / The News Tribune

RUSTON — A woman who left the scene of an accident and hit a pedestrian just seconds later in a Ruston crosswalk, just outside Tacoma, on Sunday apparently didn’t know she had hit somebody.

Steve and Renee Mead of Renton were gassing up their car Sunday in the 5000 block of North Pearl Street when they heard shouting about 2:45 p.m.

“Hey hey, stop!” Renee Mead said Monday. “(People) were shouting and starting to run.”

Mead looked over to see half of a woman’s body extending from the rear wheel well of a car.

“Somebody shouted, ‘you’re dragging a body,’ ” Renee Mead said.

Mead estimates the car was moving at 10 mph down North 51st Street.

“My husband started running after her,” Mead said. Others were chasing her as well.

Steve Mead pounded on the car’s window and yelled for the driver to stop.

“She finally stopped and looked at my husband and said, ‘What?’ ” Mead said.

Ruston Police said the car dragged the woman, whose family members have identified as Tracie Hall, 46, 100 feet down the street.

Mead said about six men lifted the rear of the car and pivoted it off of Hall.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in my life,” she said.

Mead said some women at the scene provided medical aid.

“They were comforting her,” Mead said.

Medics arrived within two minutes. Hall was transported to Saint Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma.

The Chevron station the Meads were in is where the driver had just exchanged information with a man whose car she had hit minutes earlier, said Ruston police chief Anders Estes.

“They stopped, exchanged information, she pulled out and then had this accident,” Estes said Sunday.

Hall, who family members said is homeless, was pushing a shopping cart full of personal possessions in the crosswalk at Pearl and 51st.

The driver was not cited but she is under investigation for impaired driving, Estes said.