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A runaway steel drum rolled off a construction site and fatally struck a woman walking on a nearby sidewalk in Pittsburgh, local police confirmed via the Associated Press.
Aleia Lopez, 51, a mother of three who worked at the nearby University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Western Psychiatric Hospital as an executive assistant, was identified as the woman killed in the accident, according to the New York Post.
“Aleia was a light in the lives of all that knew her and the rock for her three children Angelia, Leilani, and Ethan,” her mother, Melanie Hall, wrote on a GoFundMe page set up to help pay for her funeral expenses . “Her sudden death has put her family, especially her children, in considerable financial hardship.”
The accident took place at the construction site of the University of Pittsburgh's new sports performance center in the city's Oakland neighborhood at around 10:40 a.m. last Friday (May 3). The drum is suspected to have either been knocked over or dislodged from a piece of heavy equipment before rolling several hundred feet downhill, crashing through a fence and onto the sidewalk where Lopez was walking with her co-workers at the time.
The drum then traveled across a road before coming to a rest against a pickup truck. Lopez was reported to have suffered a head injury and pronounced dead at the scene shortly after the collision occurred.
“While this was not a UPMC construction site, this tragedy impacts our campuses and we are providing support services to our employees,” UPMC said in a statement obtained by the New York Post. “Our deepest sympathies are with the victim’s family, friends and colleagues.”