Widower Speaks After Police Say Wife Was 'Intentionally' Struck by Car on Evening Walk: 'Nothing We Could Do'
“My wife was a beautiful soul,” Derek Bizzell says of his late wife, Shaunda Bizzell. "There was nothing not to love about her"
Shaunda Bizzell Facebook
Shaunda BizzellOn March 25, Derek Bizzell and his wife, Shaunda Bizzell, were planning on having dinner after taking a leisurely walk around the block of their usually quiet Chesterfield, Va., neighborhood.
Today, one week later, Derek, 51, is attending his wife’s funeral after she was fatally struck by a car that allegedly drove straight at them, according to police.
“I’m just numb,” Derek tells PEOPLE. “I cry myself to sleep. I cry myself awake."
The tragedy unfolded just before 7 p.m. on March 25 when Derek and Shaunda, 42, set out for a walk — the first time this spring that she joined him.
“It was nice out,” he says. “I asked her if she wanted to go walking with me and she was like, ‘Sure, I’ll go,’” Derek, 51, recalls.
They were doing a second lap around their neighborhood, where cars were parked on both sides of the street, when they saw a car approaching the curve where they were walking.
With no sidewalks, the two of them got as close to the parked cars as possible as the oncoming vehicle quickly approached them, Derek says.
They were walking single file when the car seemed to come straight at them, Derek alleges.
“The guy was going so quick that he got up on us and cut his wheel and there was nowhere we could go,” he says. “I just remember hollering her name and I could hear the crash.
“There was a van right next to us so there was nothing we could do," he says.
The impact knocked Shaunda through the back windshield of a car that was in front of the van, he says.
Derek was thrown underneath the same car and suffered a dislocated wrist, scrapes and bruises. “I was bleeding from my head,” he says. “My injuries are minor compared to what happened to my wife.”
The minute he saw Shaunda, “I knew I had to get some help,” Derek says.
Dazed, he dialed 911, but was unable to speak so he handed the phone to neighbors who ran to help.
The two were rushed to a local hospital, where Shaunda died.
“I was just in disbelief," he says. "Just total disbelief.”
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“She had a heart of gold,” Derek says, noting that her birthday was on Saturday. “She enjoyed giving back.”
Shaunda worked for the local school system in the payroll department. She leaves behind two children, 19 and 30, and one grandchild, 6.
The car’s alleged driver, Daniel N. Anderson, 22, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder, malicious wounding, making threats of death or bodily injury and making threats to bomb or damage buildings, Chesterfield County Police said in a release.
Anderson allegedly “intentionally steered his vehicle toward the pedestrians,” according to the release. Police suspect he's the same person who had called 911 that same night and threatened to “shoot a school, bomb a building, and assault police officers," the release states.
He is being held at the Chesterfield County Jail without bond. It is unclear whether he has retained an attorney who can speak on his behalf.
Derek is devastated that his wife of eight years is gone.
“My wife was a beautiful soul,” he says. “There was nothing not to love about her. She had a great big, fantastic, loving smile. The Lord always came first in everything she did."
Shaunda’s Llasa Apso, Bella, keeps looking out the window for her owner. “We would leave the blinds cracked so she knew when her Mama is coming home,” he says. "But she doesn't see her Mama."
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