NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (WAVY) — The woman who was struck by a driver who left the scene in Newport News early Monday morning had just left her daughter’s home and was heading to her father’s house, where she lived.
She never made it home.
10 On Your Side broke the news that police found the vehicle that hit and killed 51-year-old Sonia Hammonds, and they found the owner of the car, but so far, no charges have been filed.
Hammonds was the mother of two, grandmother of seven, a loving daughter to her father James Winstead, with whom she lived in Williamsburg.
“Because everybody’s coming to make sure I’m OK,” James Winstead told 10 On Your Side in a beautiful warm home, full of artwork he created.
We asked: “Are you OK?
He showed emotion, which he was able to hold in check.
“I’m doing the best I can,” James Winstead said as his granddaughter patted his shoulder. “I’m doing the best I can. Yeah, that’s OK. It’s all good. It’s all good.”
Sonia lived with her father to take care of him, that’s the type of daughter she was.
She had just left her daughter’s home, where she had dinner Sunday,
“She left here around midnight heading back to grandad’s house in Williamsburg,” Kenyatta Hammonds told 10 On Your Side.
Sonia Hammonds was driving up Warwick Boulevard when she struck a curb in front of Denbigh Early Childhood Center. There is a patch of scratched up sidewalk, but police could not confirm whether that is the place she left the road.
She was able to go one more block to Industrial Park Drive where her car became disabled.
At that point she got out of her car and started walking towards the Raceway Gas Station about 400 yards away.
Before she got there, she was struck by a car, and after that, the driver fled.
According to her daughter, Sonia Hammonds was on her phone in Facetime mode with her sister.
“She said something was wrong with her tires,” Kenyatta Hammonds said.
Kenyatta Hammonds told 10 On Your Side that her aunt did not know Sonia Hammonds had been struck, but the sister stayed online, when a witness on scene spoke into the phone.
“She had retrieved the phone and brought it back to my mother, who was on the ground,” Kenyatta Hammonds said, “and we are told she was alert.
My aunt told the person on scene: “Call the ambulance, call the ambulance.”
The witness called 911.
“So, my auntie said that my mom spoke to her all the way up like, you know that she would be OK and things like that, but when she got in the ambulance, she was unresponsive,” Kenyatta Hammonds told us as her head dropped.
When she heard mom was struck, she raced to the hospital.
“I first went to the scene,” Kenyatta Hammonds said. “She had left to go to the hospital, so I went there. Yes, I got to see my mom. We were there my older brother and I. We were able to talk to my mom. [It does not appear Sonia was alert or responding.]”
Kenyatta Hammonds seems blessed that she could spend those last moments with her mother.
“We talked. I told her I loved her, gave her a kiss and things like that. And then by 2:19 a.m., she was gone.”
The one thing Kenyatta does have?
She got to say goodbye.
“Whatever words she could have said in her last breath,” Kenyatta Hammonds said, “she would have told me and my brother that she loved us because she lived for us and her grandkids. We were her life.”
