{"id":127852,"date":"2026-03-03T00:12:06","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T00:12:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/127852\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T00:12:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T00:12:06","slug":"friend-remembers-young-mother-killed-in-fiery-liberty-bridge-crash-wpxi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/127852\/","title":{"rendered":"Friend remembers young mother killed in fiery Liberty Bridge crash \u2013 WPXI"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">PITTSBURGH \u2014 The friends of a young mother are remembering her after she was killed in a fiery crash. <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Christine Ford still can\u2019t believe her friend Laila Jones died in a three-car crash on the Liberty Bridge, after becoming trapped in a car that became engulfed in flames. There\u2019s now a memorial at the location. <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">\u201cI can\u2019t even bring myself to go up on that bridge. I can\u2019t even go that way,\u201d Christine Ford told Channel 11. <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Laila leaves behind a 5-year-old son.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">\u201cI know that her son is going to have a lot ahead of him. I\u2019m just devastated thinking about what that\u2019s going to look like,\u201d Ford said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Ford\u2019s other friend, Maddie, was also in the car. She is currently in the hospital along with another man who was in the same vehicle. <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">The three were on the way to meet Ford. She instead got a call to head to Mercy Hospital. <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">\u201cMy heart just sank. And we didn\u2019t know the condition of anyone in the vehicle. So I didn\u2019t know who was taken to the hospital, and we were unsure if anyone was going to make it. It was that serious,\u201d Ford said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Right now, there are few details about what led up to the crash.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Ford is thankful that one of her friends survived. <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">\u201cI went to see her yesterday, and it\u2019s scary. She\u2019s lucky to be alive. She has no idea of the emotional and physical rollercoaster that she is going to have,\u201d Ford said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\"> Ford is grappling with how to tell Maddie that Laila didn\u2019t make it. <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">\u201cI think life is going to look a lot different. I don\u2019t know how positive it\u2019s going to feel. I think it\u2019s going to be a lot of lows, but I hope that with all the support of everyone around Maddie, she will be able to fight through this.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Download the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wpxi.com\/mobile-apps\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">FREE WPXI News app<\/a> for breaking news alerts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Follow Channel 11 News on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/wpxi\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WPXI\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Twitter<\/a>. | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wpxi.com\/video\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Watch WPXI NOW<\/a><\/p>\n<p>TOP STORIES FROM CHANNEL 11 NEWS <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph body-copyright\">\u00a92026 Cox Media Group<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PITTSBURGH \u2014 The friends of a young mother are remembering her after she was killed in a fiery&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[869,59594,48929,4931,32118,11677,3824,59593,59592,59111,4932,59595,59596,139,859,73,75,74,420,860],"class_list":["post-127852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-channel_11","tag-christy_ford","tag-ford","tag-gabriela","tag-gabriela_deluca","tag-god","tag-gordon","tag-leila","tag-leila_jones","tag-liberty_bridge","tag-lisa","tag-maddie","tag-mercy_hospital","tag-news","tag-ott_news","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-video","tag-wpxi-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}