HOPKINSVILLE, KY (WSMV) -
A loud crash jolted a Hopkinsville neighborhood from their homes Tuesday as a moped carrying two young women collided into a car.
"I held her head in my hands," remembered witness Melinda Hunter. "Just the blood that was coming through my hands, it was horrible."
A mother of three, Hunter said her protective instincts kicked in the moment she saw the wreck at the end of her street.
"I saw the mother of one of the girls, and she was saying, 'where's my baby?,'" Hunter said. "She'd seen the scattered pieces of the moped, but she couldn't find her daughter. That would have to be hard. It chokes me up thinking about it."
According to Hopkinsville police, 16-year-old Jasmine Lacquia and 20-year-old Isabella Lacquia were traveling down N. Main Street on a moped Tuesday when a car traveling the opposite direction turned left in front of them at the Glass Avenue intersection.
Glenda's Furniture manager Terry Elgin heard the collision from just yards away, and came running outside to the see the driver of the car uninjured, but the two girls on the moped badly hurt.
"They didn't look good," Elgin said. "They were laying on the hot pavement. I'm a very old man. It was the worst accident I've ever seen. The moped itself must've been in a thousand pieces."
"They yelled for a bag of ice, so I ran to my ex-father-in-law's house," Hunter said. "I grabbed a bag of ice out of his freezer and went down to the scene."
Waiting with the girls, Hunter tried to ask them questions to get them talking.
"She could not answer anything," Hunter said. "The only thing she could do was shake and shiver. I'm thinking of the shock probably."
Both girls were lifeflighted to Vanderbilt where Isabella is still in critical condition, while Jasmine is in stable condition.
An investigation into the wreck is under way. According to police, both the moped traveling southbound and the car turning left had a green light, but the moped had the right of way. No criminal charges have been filed against the driver of the car. Police are doing blood work on the driver, but don't immediately suspect anything was wrong.
Looking down at the end of her street, Hunter said her heart's with the families of two young women who she desperately wanted to help.
"I went home and grabbed a picture of my kids," Hunter said. "It's just hard being a mother."
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