Janice Mae Gilliland stepped into the road on a Thursday morning and never made it across. She was 75. The white Kia Soul came north on Highway 99E near Holly Avenue right around 8:42 a.m. on October 29.
Police say she was in an unmarked crosswalk close to milepost 7.5 in Oak Grove. The driver stayed put after the impact. Crews got Janice to a hospital fast. Doctors did what they could. She did not pull through.
Linda Jean Braskett, 76, from Portland, sat behind the wheel of that Kia. She talked with the troopers on the spot. Later they wrote her a ticket for not stopping for a pedestrian. She walked away without a scratch.
Highway 99E backed up for about an hour while the scene got sorted. State police handled the call with help from the county sheriff, Port of Portland officers, fire crews, medics, and highway workers.
Janice lived 75 years. That morning she tried to cross a busy stretch of road the same way people do every day. One car and it ended. Folks who knew her now deal with the empty space she left.
The ticket went out. The road opened back up. Nothing brings her back. Her name sits in the reports now as the woman who did not make it home that day.
Oak Grove lost one of its own in a flash. Janice Mae Gilliland is gone.
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