After struggling for 16 months, the victim of a road rage incident succumbed to the multiple injuries she sustained.
She spent the last moments of her life thinking of her children.
Jennifer Russell was seriously injured in a road rage incident in July 2016. She endured more than two dozen surgeries and lost her right leg. She was broken and depressed, but she refused to give up.
Russell died on the morning of Dec. 4. Her four-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son were at her bedside.
A few days earlier, Russell used the last of her energy to buy Christmas gifts for her children.
“She went out on Black Friday in her wheelchair and fought the crowds to make sure she could get them all she could get them,” Barlow said.
Russell then decorated the family’s Christmas tree. A few days later she was back in the hospital—for the last time.
Argument Escalates to Lethal Levels
Jennifer Russell was riding with her fiancé, James McGree, on FM 691 near La Cima Road in Denison, Texas, on July 29, 2016, when a driver in a white Hyundai Tiburon cut them off.McGree pulled up next to the other car and exchanged words with the driver. During the course of the exchange, McGree spat on the other driver’s car.
After a while McGree saw the same white Hyundai in his rearview mirror, closely followed by a black Ford truck. McGree tried to drive away.
Damage and Pain and a Hope for Justice
At the time she was so injured and in so much pain, she didn’t want to live. In an interview with WFAA on Nov. 16, she said, “I wanted to die today. I told my mom I used to be scared of the afterlife but now I’m more scared of living.”“I really shouldn’t be alive, but some things are meant to be,” she added.
For a while, Russell was motivated by a desire to see the men who crippled her brought to justice.
Russell read a statement she'd written when she heard they had been caught.
“I want the end result for them to get the maximum punishable by law for what they’ve done to my daughter,” she added.
Haliburton and Bird were each charged with causing an accident involving serious bodily injury or death, and two counts each of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. With Russell’s death, more charges could be added, said Grayson County District Attorney Joe Brown.
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