KANSAS CITY, Kan. — When Cynthia "Cindy" Goulding told her husband she was going to pick up cigarettes early Sunday morning, he never imagined it would be the last time he would see his wife of 25 years.
"I was laying in bed and I heard the fire trucks because it's right over the hill, and I heard it and I said, 'Man, I hope that's not my wife'," Raymond Goulding, Cynthia's husband, said.
During the trip to the store, Cynthia saw a wreck in front of Lee Penix's house on North 59th Street and Nogard Avenue and pulled over.
"My wife kept saying, 'She shouldn't get out of the car. She shouldn't get out of the car,'" Penix said.
Moments after Cynthia stepped onto North 59th Street, the unthinkable happened.
"[Cynthia] was barely about to check on the person that had a crash [and see] if they were OK, when the truck came and hit her and she flew under the truck," Dania Noyola, Penix's neighbor, said.
A few minutes later Cynthia's daughter, Stephanie Dixon, who was traveling with a friend, came upon on the scene.
"I got out and I walked around the vehicles and I'm yelling for my mom and she wasn't nowhere to be found," Dixon said. "I looked on the ground in between the curb and the van and that's where she had been laying. [I] went over there and held her until the ambulance and the fire department got there."
The mother of four who beat cancer twice had died.
"She helps everywhere and everybody she can," Raymond Laws, Cynthia's brother, said. "Just [to] be around her is uplifting. It's going to be hard."
The family has launched a GoFundMe campaign to help with funeral expenses.
The driver who hit Cynthia is a 42-year-old man being held at the Wyandotte County Jail. Records state that he is being held on three counts, including driving under the influence and vehicular homicide. The prosecutor has 48 hours to charge him from the time of his arrest Sunday morning.
"Is it really worth it? You know, because we lost, I lost, the best thing I ever had over this--because somebody was drunk," Raymond, Cynthia's husband, said."To the people that drink and drive, I don't care if you have one drink or 100 drinks, don't get behind that wheel -- call a cab"
Police still are investigating the initial crash that prompted Cynthia to pull over.
Anyone with information is asked to call the Greater KC Crimestoppers Hotline at 816-474-TIPS (8477).
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For jurisdictions that utilize the Greater Kansas City Crime Stoppers Tips Hotline, anonymous tips can be made by calling 816-474-TIPS (8477), submitting the tip online or through the free mobile app at P3Tips.com.
Annual homicide details and data for the Kansas City area are available through the 41 Action News Homicide Tracker, which was launched in 2015. Read the 41 Action News Mug Shot Policy.
