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Updated 13 hours ago
Clara Katherine Roberts drove down a mostly empty stretch of Route 28 before sunrise Thursday on her way to Pittsburgh International Airport – the 24-year-old planned to fly home to Texas to spend the weekend with family.
For reasons investigators have not yet said, she was hit by a wrong-way driver.
Police believe Sidney Cope, also 24, entered Route 28 traveling the wrong way on an inbound lane.
The tragedy left families and friends mourning both young lives.
The head-on collision about 3:30 a.m. between the 31st Street Bridge and the Heinz Plant left both women trapped in their cars. Rescue crews rushed them to Allegheny General Hospital a few blocks away on the North Side.
Cope was pronounced dead shortly after she arrived at the hospital. Roberts died hours later.
Cope grew up in Tampa, Fla., according to friends, and had moved to Pittsburgh in the past year or so.
Roberts, originally from Texas, had been living for more than 18 months in Indiana. She was deciding on which law school she would attend in the fall.
“This is such a loss to our world,” said the Rev. Joan Sabatino, minister at the First Unitarian Universalist Church in Indiana, where Roberts was a member. She was also Roberts' landlord. “She was just so sweet – that's the word I think of when I think of her.”
Friends from Rice University, where Roberts had attended, said she cared deeply for social justice causes, organizing events for gender equality and reproductive justice at the university's Women's Resource Center.
“I bragged about Clara to everyone I knew,” said friend Ali Pineiro, 22, of Houston. The two were applying to law schools together, and Pineiro said Roberts scored 178 on her Law School Admission Test – a score near the 99th percentile.
She called Roberts a role model – a sentiment echoed by other classmates.
“Although Clara and I were the same age, I always looked up to her, almost as a mentor,” said Mary Anderson, 24, of New York. “She was very wise beyond her years and always knew what to do in times of adversity.”
Friend Jake LaViola, 24, of Orlando noted how Roberts organized a memorial last year when a member of their friend group died: “She was a shoulder to cry on and so strong to carry us through it all.”
Cope loved life and could make anyone laugh, said friend, Kayley Coady, 25, of Tampa.
“Sidney was absolutely amazing,” she said. “Sidney was just full of life, always, especially around the ones she really cared for.”
Coady called Cope a hard worker who adored her Doberman, Vinnie.
She said Cope and her sister, Alyssa Harding, were close.
Harding said she was on her way to Pittsburgh from her home in Michigan, and she declined to speak beyond voicing her sorrow.
“My heart is completely shattered,” she said, “not only for my sister but the other woman involved.”
Megan Guza is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach her at 412-380-8519 or mguza@tribweb.com.
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