Buffalo city officials predicted the death toll from the snowstorm would pass the 27 confirmed killings and they were correct.
Yesterday (Dec. 26), WSOC-TV of Charlotte first reported the death of a 22-year-old woman who passed away after being stuck in her car for 18 hours during the horrific blizzard that hit New York over the weekend. The death toll now sits at 28, according to CNN.
The woman identified as Anndel Taylor, 22, reportedly got trapped in the snow while driving home from work in Buffalo on Friday (Dec. 23) afternoon.
Taylor, who was from Charlotte, shared a series of videos with her sisters who are in North Carolina. The last video posted came just after midnight, which showed her rolling down her ice-covered window into a nearby van also stuck in the snow with its emergency lights on.
One of Taylor’s sisters, Shawnequa Brown, spoke with WSOC-TV about her sister’s surprising death. “I don’t know if any of us really knew how serious it was, we didn’t see the news, we didn’t really know what was going on in Buffalo,” said Shawnequa. “She was telling my sister that she was scared.”
Taylor’s family believes that she called 911 and waited for emergency responders to rescue her, but they couldn’t reach her.
“I feel like everybody that tried to get to her got stuck. Fire department, police, everybody got stuck,” said Tomeshia Brown, Taylor’s other sister. “Why didn’t they have chains on their tires? This is a state that is known for snow.”
Wanda Brown Steele, Taylor’s mother, said her daughter planned to sleep out the storm, then walk home. Instead, she was found dead inside her car, and her family thinks she was stuck for 18 hours. Steele also believes that her daughter didn’t die from hypothermia, but from carbon monoxide poisoning.
“The car was running, and the snow was still coming, so it blocked the pipes, the exhaust pipe,” Steele said. “Then after the car cut off, that’s when she iced up.”
The tragic chain of events comes between Christmas and Taylor’s upcoming 23rd birthday.
“A lot of crying, (she) still got presents under the tree,” Shawnequa Brown said.