BUFFALO, N.Y. — In the wake of a blizzard that claimed more than 30 lives in western New York, a family says one of the people killed was a woman who was trapped in her car for hours.
Anndel Taylor, 22, was driving home from work in Buffalo when she got caught in the winter storm over the weekend, her sister Shawnequa Brown told WSOC.
“I don’t know if any of us really knew how serious it was, we didn’t see the news, we didn’t know what was going on in Buffalo,” Brown told the station.
In a group chat with her family, Taylor said that she was stuck in blinding snow that was piling up fast and shared videos of her car windows that were covered by snow, WSOC reported.
Taylor called 911 and waited for first responders, but they were unable to reach her. When Taylor was found dead in her car, her family estimated she had been stuck for 18 hours, they told WSOC.
“I feel like everybody that tried to get to her got stuck,” Tomeshia Brown, Taylor’s sister, told WSOC. “Fire department, police, everybody got stuck. Why didn’t they have chains on their tires? This is a state that is known for snow.”
Taylor’s mother told WSOC that she believes her daughter was killed by carbon monoxide poisoning when the vehicle’s exhaust pipe was blocked by snow.
Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz told CNN that two-thirds of the equipment that was sent to clear snow got stuck itself and that a historian with the Buffalo Fire Department said this was the first time in the agency’s history that conditions got too severe for emergency crews to respond.
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