A Tchula nurse drowned late Wednesday night as a result of flooding across a Leflore County highway.
Shanika Newton, 43, was driving home from work on U.S. 49E, about 12 miles south of Greenwood, when she ran into water coming over the two-lane highway around 11:30 p.m., according to Will Gnemi, Leflore County deputy coroner.
Gnemi said he did not know whether the car Newton was driving hydroplaned or was swept off the highway by the water’s current, but it wound up in a nearby ditch swollen with water from the heavy rains of the past several days. Her car, a 2014 Mazda 6TF, overturned in the water, according to a press release from the Mississippi Highway Patrol.
Gnemi said he was told at the scene that Newton was talking on the phone with her husband at the time of the accident, then called an emergency number to try to get help.
“Water was coming in and she couldn’t get out,” Gnemi said. “She called for help from her car before it actually went all the way under.”
She was alone in the vehicle, he said.
In addition to the Highway Patrol, the Leflore County’s Sheriff’s Department and the Mississippi Department of Transportation were dispatched to the scene.
A dive team recovered her body after 1 a.m.
Newton was a licensed practical nurse. According to her LinkedIn profile, she was employed at two nursing homes, Riverview Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Greenwood and Durant Healthcare. Neither facility would confirm on Thursday whether that information was current.
There was speculation that the water overflowed onto U.S. 49E as the result of a dam breaching earlier Wednesday evening in western Carroll County.
A section of Kimes Lake, through which Abiaca Creek runs, collapsed before 11 p.m. near the watershed lake’s emergency spillway, according to Ken Strachan, Carroll County’s emergency management director. He said he was told that the release of the water from the 50-acre lake started off slowly but that more than half of the lake flowed out through the breach.
About a mile stretch of U.S. 49E was still blocked off Thursday morning by the Department of Transportation, waiting for the floodwater to recede.
- Contact Tim Kalich at 662-581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
Employees with the Mississippi Department of Transportation monitor a 1-mile section of U.S. 49E that remained blocked off Thursday morning as they waited for the floodwater to recede. The section, about 12 miles south of Greenwood, was the scene of a fatal drowning Wednesday night. (By Tim Kalich, Copyright 2024 Emmerich Newspapers, Inc.)
