Crash Victim's Mom Asks Obama for Help

As Alex Drake’s family plans her funeral and her newborn son struggles to accept formula, her mother is trying to get the ear of leaders to turn a “killer highway” into a safe passage for drivers.

Drake, 25, of Chula Vista died after her car was hit head-on by a Jaguar that had crossed the yellow line into oncoming traffic along State Route 67 in Ramona around 11 a.m. Sunday

The Jaguar was racing with a white BMW according to the California Highway Patrol.

Melvin Pearless, 47, who was injured in the crash, may face vehicular manslaughter charges in connection with the crash, offiers said. Another driver, the person behind the wheel of the BMW, fled the scene, according to the CHP.

Alex was driving to Fashion Valley with her newborn son, Jayden, strapped in a carseat in the backseat. She was following her mom, Pamela Shone McKeirnan of Ramona, who was driving ahead in a separate car. McKeirnan was struck first by the oncoming car and then witnessed the accident and rushed to help her daughter and grandchild.

McKeirnan wants to keep another mother from going through the same tragedy.

Nineteen people have been killed in accidents along the 25 miles of 67 between El Cajon and Ramona in the past three years, according to the CHP.

It's such a dangerous stretch of road, officers consider it a "high collision" corridor.

On Tuesday, McKeirnan sent NBCSanDiego.com a copy of a letter in which she asks President Barack Obama, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Cal Trans to do something to make the stretch of road safer.

“A few tons of concrete down the center of this highway will at least mean another mother will not have to go through what I and my family are going through,” McKeirnan writes.

"No mother should have to bury their child, worse no mother should have to climb out of her car and run to her daughters car to find her trapped in the car, unable to move. Look at the child you carried for nine months with metal twisted around her. Unable to hold her."

"Then hearing her four week old baby trapped in the back of the car cry. Having to choose who you give your attention to at that moment."

"Then telling your child you love her and to hold on as passersby's assist you and drag you away from your child and grandson. To stand behind the "line" as the jaws of life cut the twisted metal away from her. Praying, begging and bartering with God to safe her, but knowing that she will not survive, her head twisted in the wreckage," she writes.

In the letter, McKeirnan asks President Obama to designate some stimulus money to build a divider so that "a Normal 0 ll the innocent lives could be saved." 

"This would not stop the racing, nor would it stop the drifting of drunk drivers, it would though stop them from drifting into oncoming traffic. If someone is to be injured, rather it be the irresponsible driver who chooses to race or drink and drive," she writes.

McKeirnan ends the letter explaining that Wednesday she will go to the funeral home to "buy a cemetery plot for her a daughter and a casket to place her in."

On Tuesday, CHP officials announced increased patrols and DUI checkpoints along SR 67 over the next year. A $265,000 grant will take effect Wednesday bankrolling an extra 2,200 CHP officer hours patrolling this stretch of road.

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