Two killed in Greene Co. crash
From left, Amanda Whipkey and Sherry Espinoza
This is the scene on Route 21 west at Havers Hill Road in Jefferson Township where two women, Amanda Whipkey, 19, and Sherry Lynn Espinozo, 23, were killed in a two-car crash just before 11 p.m.
Amanda Whipkey
Sherry Espinoza
JEFFERSON – Two Waynesburg residents were killed late Monday night in a two-vehicle crash in Jefferson Township, Greene County.
State police said Sherry Lynn Espinoza, 23, was traveling west on state Route 21 at Havers Hill Road just before 11 p.m. when she went off the right side of the road on a curve. Espinoza’s car hit a guardrail, traveled across the westbound lane and into the eastbound lane, where it ran head-on into a vehicle driven by 19-year-old Amanda Lynn Whipkey.
Espinoza and Whipkey died at the scene. A passenger in Whipkey’s car, Richard Leo Gump Jr., 24, of Waynesburg, was taken to a hospital. Police said his injuries did not appear to be life-threatening.
Breanna Smitley of Mather, a 2014 Jefferson-Morgan High School graduate, became friends with Whipkey when Whipkey briefly attended J-M.
“She was just a person you wanted to be friends with. She was always smiling, laughing and goofing off,” Smitley said. “She’d talk to anybody and be friends with anybody. She was really nice and could always make you laugh.”
Smitely said Whipkey moved around a good bit and she thinks at some point she may have attended several schools in Greene County.
Whipkey’s Facebook page said she worked at Bob Evans, but Smitley said she believes Whipkey got a job at a restaurant/bar, perhaps in Pittsburgh.
She said Whipkey was someone everyone liked “because she was just that kind of girl, accepting and nice to everyone she met.”
Attempts to speak with friends or relatives of Espinoza were unsuccessful.