Local Man Dies Trying To Get Home In Snowstorm
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Like many people during Monday night's storm, a Beechview man had to abandon his vehicle because of the snow and ice.
However, this man died after walking up the snow-covered streets to get to his home.
Bill Henderson, 60, was forced to pull his car over off Banksville Road. He walked up three sets of steep, snow-covered city steps to his home on Hampshire Avenue only to collapse minutes later.
"I heard his body hit the floor," said Carrie Henderson, Bill's wife. "I got up and went in the kitchen and his was laying against the kitchen door."
Carrie knew the snowy steps were too much for her husband who had a stent in his heart. She called 911 and a dispatcher started talking her through CPR.
"At one point, she started to count for me because I was losing my concentration on counting," she said. "I was saying, 'this isn't working; he's not breathing.'"
Carrie says emergency responders finally reached them some 15 to 20 minutes later.
"I walked this floor and I prayed the whole time out loud," Carrie said.
The news had now reached Henderson's son, Derick, who ironically had to abandon his car and walk to reach his parents' house.
"I take comfort in knowing that my dad died here with his wife. He didn't alone. He didn't die lying in the snow. He didn't die laying on the steps somewhere. He died in his own house," said Derick. "He made it, he made it home."
The Henderson family doesn't blame the delayed paramedics or the city for bad road conditions. They say this is about God's will.
"If he intended for my husband to be revived - when I was down on the floor, giving him mouth to mouth and trying to resuscitate him - he would have gotten the breath that he needed," said Carrie.
The funeral service for Bill Henderson will be held at Mount Ararat Baptist Church in Pittsburgh on Monday at 11 a.m.
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