Region digest 09/27/04

Hitchhiker dies after being struck on I-55

A hitchhiking woman died after stepping directly into the path of a northbound Jeep Saturday evening on Interstate 55 a mile north of Jackson, the Missouri State Highway Patrol said. Nancy Stawicki, 34, of St. Louis was pronounced dead at the scene by Cape Girardeau County Coroner Michael Hurst and was taken to McCombs Funeral Home in Jackson. Driver Nole Curry, 29, of Cape Girardeau was uninjured. It appeared that Stawicki had been dropped off near the accident site and was hitchhiking back to her last known address in Perryville, Mo., said Sgt. C.H. Fulkerson. He said he had patrolled the same area for four hours that evening with no site of Stawicki and received the accident call 45 minutes into his break. The accident occurred when Curry was looking at an unidentified small vehicle in the median of the interstate and Stawicki, for an unknown reason, stepped in front of his vehicle. It is possible she was crossing to hitch a ride with the unidentified vehicle, which was described only as possibly a minivan or a station wagon, Fulkerson said.

Power line fire causes outage at Delta, Chaffee

A burning power line caused a five-hour power outage Sunday afternoon in most of Delta and parts of Chaffee, Mo. A cross bar on a power line pole between the two towns had become loose and came into contact with other energized lines, said Capt. Grayson Gluek of the Delta Fire Protection District. The pole burned from the inside out and from the top to about 10 feet above the ground. Delta firefighters arrived on the scene at 11:58 a.m. but waited for two hours until AmerenUE workers arrived to ensure that the power was off. In the meantime, traffic was redirected around the site. By 6 p.m., a new pole was installed and power restored.

-- From staff reports