For Bluffton crash victims, joy of recovery colored by loss of a friend

The last thing Andrea Dewey remembers is the white truck coming up too fast behind her.

“I remember we were driving on (Interstate) 26 and I saw, pretty far away but coming really fast, a white truck,” Andrea said Tuesday. “I remember thinking to myself, ‘OK, I need to move over to the right,’ and I started moving to the right.”

The truck struck the rear of Dewey’s Nissan Rogue, sending it off the highway and slamming it into the treeline.

In the vehicle with Andrea were her daughter Emma and Emma’s best friend, Grace Sulak. The two 14-year-olds were coming home to Bluffton after competing in a track meet in Columbia.

“I don’t think I made it all the way into the right lane, and then there was a jolt,” Andrea said. “I felt like we were flying, and then I don’t remember hitting the tree at all. I don’t know if I lost consciousness.”

Sulak died at the scene.

Emma and Andrea were critically injured.

The driver never stopped.

Brief relief, lasting horror

The Nissan was entangled in the trees.

Andrea looked over to the front passenger seat to check on Emma and then to Sulak, who sat in the back seat.

“I could see (Emma’s) face was bleeding, and she was making noise,” Andrea said.

“I looked back at Grace, and she wasn’t responding to me.”

Andrea doesn’t know how long the three were trapped in the vehicle.

But even in the confusion, there was the smallest of miracles.

Her neighbor, Brian Watkins, was suddenly at the window trying to keep Emma still.

Watkins had been on his way home to Bluffton with a van full of JROTC students from Bluffton High School. He pulled over when he saw the wreck scene.

He did not know the passengers were his neighbors.

“The driver started yelling at me, saying, ‘Brian, Brian, it’s Andrea Dewey, your neighbor. Brian, is Grace OK?’ ” Watkins told The Island Packet in the days after the May 7 crash.

Andrea remembers EMS workers arriving. They got Emma out of the car first.

Sulak was next.

Finally, Andrea was extracted and taken to the hospital.

“I was conscious in the emergency room and kept asking where they were,” she said. “I kept asking ‘Where is Emma? Where is Grace?’ They told me they had one of them up in ICU, but they didn’t know which one.”

“They asked me ‘What do they look like?’ I said they both have blonde hair, blue eyes and braces.”

She was briefly relieved when word came that Emma was in the ICU unit.

That relief turned to horror when hospital staff could not tell her where Grace was.

“I said ‘Well, where is she? Because she was in the car with us,’ and they said they didn’t know.

“I just couldn’t understand why they didn’t know.”

A memorial service for Grace was held four days after the crash in a packed Bluffton High School gymnasium.

Resilience and healing

Andrea and Emma spent 11 days in the hospital, a short amount of time that surprised their doctors.

The two continue to participate in three physical therapy sessions a week.

“It’s probably my favorite part of the day, because I feel like I’m moving forward instead of staying where I was,” Andrea said.

Andrea had two compound fractures to her right ankle, a “pulverized” kneecap that required two surgeries to “piece back together,” a cracked breast bone and facial fractures, she said.

She still wears a brace over her leg.

Emma suffered two broken vertebrae, a perforated bowel, bruised lungs, contusions to both sides of her brain and a broken wrist, according to her father, Chris Dewey. She was placed in an induced coma for four days to help her heal.

“She’s been extremely resilient, because she had a lot worse injuries than me,” Andrea said.

Emma had to wear a back brace until Wednesday, when her doctor told her she no longer needs it. However, she still is not allowed to run.

“The doctor said I’m only allowed to walk and I’m not allowed to walk past a mile and a half, so I do that,” Emma said Tuesday. “A lot of my friends decided to do cross country this year, and I’m almost jealous of them.

“They said they are running in dedication to Grace.”

Emma will be a freshman at May River High School in just a few short weeks. She hopes to compete on this season’s cross country team and is anxious to start training.

“I really want to get back to running,” she said. “My doctor said I’d probably be back for this cross country season, which starts late August. So I mean, I’ll be back to running, but I won’t be at the point that I was. I think I’m just going to be starting over. It’s kind of frustrating.”

Andrea is looking forward to walking and driving again.

Doing other things, like spin class and running, may have to wait, her doctor told her, but a full recovery is not impossible.

‘Good to be home’

The driver of the white pickup — described as a white Dodge Ram 2500 pickup truck by the South Carolina Highway Patrol — has yet to be identified.

“Just come forward to have some closure for everybody and justice for Grace,” Andrea said.

She said she believes the driver was impaired at the time of the crash, and she still hopes he or she will be found.

“I know that (the S.C. Highway Patrol) are following up with leads very seriously,” she said.

Highway Patrol Sgt. Bob Beres said Wednesday the hit-and-run remains under investigation. He said the public is encouraged to come forward with any tips or information.

The Deweys are trying to return to normal life, little by little. They continue to mourn Grace.

“It’s been a hard summer,” Andrea said. “The one thing that’s been great is all the community support. We’ve had so many people call and emailing, stopping by and sending meals. That’s been great. I was really scared to come back from the hospital. I didn’t know how I was going to, you know, not be in the hospital. But after a week or two, it was good to be home.”

This story was originally published July 20, 2016 at 3:09 PM with the headline "For Bluffton crash victims, joy of recovery colored by loss of a friend."