By Brandie Piper and Aja J. Williams
ST. LOUIS — A woman pushed her 10-year-old daughter out of the way of an oncoming car but died as she saved the child.
Colleen Segbers, 33, was leaving a Walgreens drug store shortly after 7:30 p.m. CT Monday when a 58-year-old woman, who thought she had her SUV parked in one of the store’s handicapped spaces, realized her car was moving as she adjusted the radio, according to St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department officials.
Instead of applying the brakes, the driver, whose name was not released, pressed the accelerator by mistake. She tried to swerve to miss a pillar in front of the store but pinned Segbers between the vehicle and the pillar.
Segbers pushed her daughter out of the way before the SUV hit, according to St. Louis Fire Department officials.
“She was an outstanding mother, dependable and honest friend, an ambassador of doing the right thing,” her friend, Daashia Cochran of Marathon, Fla., wrote in establishing a GoFundMe page to help with Segbers’ funeral expenses and care for her daughter.
Segbers, a substitute teacher at Confluence Academy charter school, died at the scene, authorities said. The SUV driver had minor injuries and was taken to an area hospital.
A GoFundMe account established to help with Colleen Segbers’ funeral expenses and care for her daughter has raised about $20,000 in the past day.
Brandie Piper 