A 61-year-old woman was killed when a tree crashed onto her car as a powerful storm tore through Fairfax County, Virginia, on Friday evening.
Marla Holden was the victim, her husband of 16 years said in an interview with News4.
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WATCH HEREHolden was an “amazing woman,” Wesley Holden said.
“Many hats. I was telling friends, she’s just a bunch of accomplishments. She had good things to say to everyone, and the way she did her direction, the way she guided people and stuff – she would always get you to do things by encouragement, and she would always recognize your strength,” he said.
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SIGN UP Marla Holden was headed home from work at George Washington's Mount Vernon and driving along George Washington Memorial Parkway when huge trees fell onto the roadway just south of Morningside Lane.
Men who live nearby, in the Fort Hunt area south of Alexandria, ran to the roadway with axes to try to help police and rescue units get to Holden, witnesses said.
Her husband was at work at the time.
“I was getting home around 11. Last thing I said to my wife was ‘I love you.’ She said ‘I love you’ on the phone,” he said.
When he got home from work, he thought his wife was in bed asleep. Then, U.S. Park Police knocked on his door.
“Definitely a shock,” he said.
The couple had dreams and plans.
“The only thing we didn’t accomplish is growing old together. That was that last thing that we wanted to do. We bought a house. We just finished our kitchen, and we were just going to work on retirement and see our grandkids,” Wesley Holden said.
A second driver, also a woman, was killed by a falling tree at about the same time, on Frye Road in the Woodlawn area. Information on her identity was not immediately available.
A portion of the parkway remained closed Tuesday morning, as cleanup efforts continued and crews chopped down trees more than three days after the storm.
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