Car careens into Minneapolis bus stop, killing woman

A car careened backward across a Minneapolis parking lot early Monday evening, smashed into a bus shelter and killed a woman waiting for a ride.

As darkness and raindrops fell, her son, Terrance Weaver, stood outside the police tape, sobbing and waiting for information about his mother, whom he was supposed to pick up. "I was just 10 minutes too late," he said. "When I got here, it already happened. All I could see was her purple sweater. Why didn't people swerve away?"

Relatives said Billee Weaver was 45.

Minneapolis police said a woman driving a sport-utility vehicle was backing up in the parking lot at the McDonald's near the corner of 45th and Lyndale Avenues N. when it rapidly accelerated, hit a car in the parking lot, struck a tree and then a cement trash container before hitting the bus shelter shortly after 5 p.m.

Police spokesman John Elder said a man who was in the bus shelter with Weaver fled immediately after the accident but was later found and taken to Hennepin County Medical Center to be treated for noncritical injuries.

The woman and the man in the SUV were being questioned by police late Monday, but it does not appear alcohol or drugs were involved, Elder said.

Police have not named the people being questioned or the victims.

Chavadia Darrough said she saw the driver arguing with a man in her car. He got out and walked across the street to the gas station, she said. The SUV suddenly went over the grass and into the shelter.

"The man in the shelter tried to grab the woman's hand but the car hit the shelter," Darrough said.

Terrance Weaver, 27, said he dropped off his mom and her boyfriend at the McDonald's earlier so they could grab some dinner and bring some food home for the grandkids. A while later he said his mom called to say, " 'Son, come pick me up.' " Her boyfriend was with her, he said.

"I was almost here when her boyfriend called me and said someone just hit the bus shelter. He said, 'Your mom didn't get out.' I don't know why they were in the bus shelter."

Terrance Weaver looked over the police tape to the SUV still in the street. "It's so sad," he said, his voice cracking.

He said he and his family belong to the White Earth Nation and have lived in Minneapolis all their lives.

"She was mother of five and a grandmother. She has 14 grandkids with one on the way," he said. "I still can't believe this happened."