VANCOUVER, Wash. — Justine Baker is in utter shock that she will never again talk to her older sister, Danielle Abrahams.
"I don't think there's a word that covers how we're all feeling," Baker said. "I think we're all just trying to be strong and do the pieces we can do."
That's all Baker and the rest of the family can do following what happened at a home near the corner of Fourth Plain Boulevard and Fruit Valley Road in Vancouver on the night of Aug. 3. Abrahams was at home with her husband and brother that evening when a car hit a curb, slammed through a fence and crashed into the house.
The car hit Abrahams. Her brother rushed to her side.
"He held her hand and he kept saying it's going to be okay and she'll be fine, and she said she can't breathe a handful of times and then she stopped responding," Baker said.
Abrahams was pinned under the car and died from asphyxiation, the Clark County Medical Examiner's Office later confirmed. Her dog was also killed in the crash.
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Baker said Abrahams loved her dog. She loved life, as well.
"She was a canner, an avid gardener," Baker said. "She had a heart."
Abrahams' heart was evident in her more than 10-year career at Reside Residential Care, a company focused on supporting people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
"The short time Danielle had on this earth, she did not waste a moment sharing her compassion, her generosity, her kindness," Rich Nakanishi said.
Nakanishi is a colleague and good friend of Abrahams. He said the entire staff at Reside Residential Care is reeling over her death.
"We're just trying to make sense of it," Nakanishi said. "Someone so good. How can something so bad happen to a person?"
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The driver accused of hitting Abrahams has been identified as Karen Baker (no relation to Justine Baker). Police believe Karen Baker was under the influence at the time of the crash. She is still in the hospital and will be booked into jail when she is discharged.
"I hope she gets the fullest punishment possible," Justine Baker said. "I think she made a decision that night. She's in her 50s. She knew better."
It's difficult to accept that the driver's life goes on while her sister's life does not, she added.
"Our lives are frozen," she said. "How do you move past that?"
Vancouver's traffic manager said there has been one other crash at the Fourth Plain and Fruit Valley intersection since 2015. Nobody was injured or killed, but in the wake of the crash that took Abrahams' life, the traffic manager said engineers will evaluate the intersection for possible countermeasures.
Family has established a Go Fund Me to help with expenses that arise as a result of Abrahams' death.