Family speaks on loss, healing after a woman was killed while crossing a Tulsa street

TULSA, Okla. — Family members are speaking out after a woman was struck and killed while crossing a street in south Tulsa earlier this week.

FOX23 reported Monday morning after police said that woman, who family identified as 49-year-old Sheryl Douglas, had been hit by a pickup truck after getting off a bus near 81st and Lewis Avenue.

Her sister, Katie Schmitt, is all about family.

“I don’t cry a whole lot, but family makes me cry, more than anything,” Schmitt said. But the tears that come are not tears anyone should expect. Certainly not so early in life.

Schmitt and her five siblings have already been dealing with loss. “I have an older brother that passed away when he was 25,” she said. And they’re now living it all over again.

“So this kind of hits hard for us, having two siblings that have passed away,” she said.

It all happened Monday morning. Her sister, Sheryl, was trying cross 81st street near Lewis Avenue in South Tulsa. “She was basically just going to work,” Schmitt said. “She’d just stepped off the bus to go to another bus.”

But her life ended in an instant.

“I truck just happened to be going by… and he just took her out,” she said.

Amid her grief, also lie questions.

“Why is the crosswalk not right where they’re getting off,” she said.

She doesn’t want to see anyone else go through the same.

“There’s a lot of things you can do. Put signs up, lights up,” Schmitt said.

It’s a loss you simply can’t understand if you haven’t been through it, that she’s living, all over again.

“It’s just hard to talk about when it’s so new and fresh,” she said. “Losing a sibling… it’s probably one of the worst things you can go through.”

Her family has started a GoFundMe to raise money for Sheryl’s final life expenses.