Family pushing for answers months after woman dies in freak accident at hospital parking garage

PITTSBURGH — At 79, Terry Phillips was the center of her family.

“Every time I step out my door and her blind is up, that was blind down, mom is still in bed and blind up is game on, we can either go down or call,” said Marie Lawton, who’s Terry’s daughter.

Lawton can’t even put her loss into words.

“She was very, very active, no grass grew under her feet. She always had something to do. But in the past two months, I’ve wanted to call my mom 20 times a day about the dumbest things, like ‘mom did you hear,’ not being able to call her that’s the hardest,” Lawton said.

One of the hardest parts for Lawton is the unanswered questions. What she knows right now is that her mom was taking her dad to an appointment at UPMC Shadyside on April 17. Lawton told Channel 11 her mom was in the wrong entrance and when she got out of the car to get a ticket to turn around, her car wasn’t in park and she got trapped underneath, waiting 30 minutes before EMS got to the scene.

“Poor Mr. Phillips was trying to lift the car off his wife, I can’t imagine having to watch your wife be essentially crushed to death. This was absolutely a preventable tragedy,” said Defense Attorney Matthew Scanlon.

Scanlon is representing this family and intending to file a lawsuit to find out what took so long to get help and why no one from the hospital, just feet away, stepped in to help.

“The public deserves answers on this, this is a public safety issue, UPMC being the largest provider in the area, we all deserve answers to this,” Scanlon said.

We asked the questions to UPMC, which did not respond. While this family looks back on the happy moments and lives each day for Terry.

“It’s not on the world, it’s the impact on me, on my husband, on my grandchildren, on my dad. That’s where she left the impact and we take it out into the world,” Lawton said.

The hope is to officially file the lawsuit in Allegheny County court within the next month.

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