NASHVILLE, Tenn. (Nashville Banner) — This story was originally published by the Nashville Banner. Sign up for their newsletter.
On Tuesday morning, a woman named Kay sat on a tree-shaded curb facing a row of semi-trucks parked behind a Shell station in southeast Nashville. Yes, she said, she knew the woman who had died there less than 24 hours earlier. Her name was Tasha.
The two had been friends for 20 years, Kay said, living on the streets of Murfreesboro and Nashville. More recently, they were part of a small group of unhoused people who often seek refuge in that parking lot among the big rigs and their resting drivers. When Kay got there Monday afternoon, she saw an ambulance.
“I walked up and she was gone,” she told the Banner.
The Metro Nashville Police Department said Monday that the 46-year-old woman had been sleeping underneath a semi-truck trailer when its driver pulled out of the parking spot around 2:30 p.m., running her over. They said the driver, who did not stop, “may not have known that the woman was run over.”
MNPD spokesperson Brooke Reese told the Banner on Tuesday that the medical examiner’s office was still working to confirm her identity.
Kay said Tasha’s boyfriend had been at the scene on Monday, but she wasn’t sure about any other family that she had. She spoke about her friend not as someone she’d been living around but as a person she’d been surviving with. When Kay suffered an accidental overdose last month, she said, Tasha had rushed to her aid. Sitting on the curb next to Kay, Michael Keys said Tasha had always been kind.
“She was down and out, but a heart of gold,” he said.
Both said it’s common for people to rest in the shade beside or even underneath the parked semi-trucks, usually staying away from the tires. It was above 90 degrees on Monday afternoon when Tasha would have crawled under one. The drivers, Kay said, are “really nice” and often give out water. They are also supposed to inspect outside their vehicles before taking off again. A driver sitting in the cab of his truck nearby confirmed as much. He declined to give his name, as he was on the job, but said if the incident happened the way it’s been described then the driver was in the wrong.
Keys said he’d fight to make sure people don’t just move on from his friend’s death.
“I’m not letting this go,” he said. “She’s not going out like that.”
Kay began to cry as she expressed her doubts about what comes next.
“I doubt they’re really going to investigate because of what we do — because of where we are,” she said. “It’s just one less problem for them … But we’re still somebody’s mother or sister or daughter.”
This article first appeared on Nashville Banner and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Kelsey Gibbs brings us a powerful story of humanity, compassion, and love in action while showing us the hard and lifesaving work our officers do daily. Nashville is lucky to have people like Lt. Hotz wearing the badge.
- Carrie Sharp
