Running late, a woman used her car to cut stopped driver ‘in half,’ Missouri cops say

Elizabeth McKeown said she was in a hurry to make her car payment at the bank when she encountered stopped traffic at a Springfield intersection, the Springfield News-Leader reported.

When McKeown, 46, got stuck behind another car, she used her Mustang and “nudged it a few times,” she told police, according to KTTS.

Then, after some nudging, McKeown said she “just decided to hit it full out,” police say, KTTS reported. That was at about 5:15 p.m. on Nov. 20.

To other drivers, it only looked like a fender bender at first, KY3 reported, but it soon became a fatal crash.

After her car was struck, driver Barbara Foster, 57, told her co-worker on the phone that she had to go, KSPR reported.

“We knew that she had been rear ended because actually we spoke to her just before,” friend and co-worker Logan Rader said, according to KSPR. “She said hey I just got ... rear-ended. I got to let you go.”

That was the last time Rader would hear from Foster.

After ending her call, Foster got out of her car to see the damage, KY3 reported.

“She is just sitting there saying you just hit my car, you are still hitting my car,” witness Jamie Luaces-Adams recalled, according to the station.

McKeown told police that Foster began to yell at her, KTTS reported, so McKeown “tricked her” and tried to “make her think I was going to be nice, be still and everything.”

But what she did next was a deadly decision, police say.

As Foster was checking out the damage to the back of her car, McKeown told police, she backed her Mustang up, “slammed” into Foster and “cut her in half,” KTTS reported.

“I am looking behind me, I see this poor woman go underneath this Mustang. And I can’t believe what I am seeing,” Luaces-Adams said, according to KY3.

Foster was dragged 58 feet, according to the News-Leader.

One witness told police that he yelled to McKeown and said that she just hit someone, and she mouthed back, “I know,” the News-Leader reported.

After striking Foster, McKeown tried to drive away, the newspaper reported, but witnesses did not let her get far.

McKeown got a few blocks away before crashing into a car, and witnesses held her there until officers arrived, The Associated Press reported.

Foster was killed in the crash, and McKeown has since been charged with first-degree murder, the AP reported. McKeown was booked into the Greene County Jail without bond because the court decided “she is a danger to the community,” KSPR reported.

Foster was on her way to volunteer at the Free Medical Clinic of the Ozarks in Hollister when she was killed, according to KY3.