Spaghetti Junction wreck victim lived to help others

By Craig Schneider

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

People are remembering her as “the good Samaritan” of the storm of 2009.

For Barbara Jean Smith, it was a familiar role, whether she was giving money to a stranger on the street, or making Christmas special for a needy girl, or taking in a friend going through hard times.

“I am righteous in God,” Smith wrote on her bedroom mirror in black marker. “I declare it.”

That’s the way she lived. And that’s the way she died.

Smith, a 53-year-old single mother of three in DeKalb County, stopped to help a driver stranded high on Spaghetti Junction Sunday and died in a horrifying plunge over the concrete barrier.

Smith was an early victim of Atlanta’s relentless rains; the flooding that came afterward killed nine more. During those day-after-day storms, Atlantans saw great tragedy and simple decency: people dying in the rain, people coming together to help one another. Smith’s death touched both of those extremes.

“She was trying to do something good,” said her daughter, Tynisha Slaughter, 22.

It was that same generous spirit that led Smith last Christmas to take in the daughter of a woman in financial trouble. Smith wanted to make sure the girl, about 10, had a happy Christmas and she bought the girl clothes, a doll and a computer.

The girl stayed for three months, and when it was over, Smith helped the child’s mother find a job.

At times, Smith was impulsive in her good deeds. She helped people she didn’t know. She did things seeming not to care that she might put herself in harm’s way, family members said.

Smith was heading from church to her job caring for an elderly woman Sunday when she saw a car that had spun out of control on the wet roadway and stopped on Spaghetti Junction. She wanted to make sure the driver was all right, said her son, Maurice Lattimore, 20. So she slowed to a stop on the ramp where I-85 south curves off into I-285 east, according to police.

She spoke to the driver, Donald Sykes, 33, of Covington, and lent him her cell phone so he could call for help.

“She wasn’t going to leave until she knew he was OK,” said Maurice Lattimore.

Both were standing on the elevated shoulder at about 1 p.m., police said, when a vehicle rear-ended one of the stopped vehicles, which lunged forward and pushed her over the side barrier. She fell about 50 feet to the northbound lanes of I-85.

Smith died at the scene, police said. Sykes, who suffered several fractures, was treated from Grady Memorial Hospital and released Tuesday.

DeKalb County police have charged the driver who struck the car, Marcelino Chavez-Lopez, with second-degree vehicular homicide. He was also charged with driving without a license and failure to maintain lane, police spokesman Jason Gagnon.

Some people close to Smith questioned whether she should have stopped at the scene. They point out the wet roads, and that she was a woman, and to the inherent danger of an elevated roadway.

Her children defend her.

“She was very kind and nurturing,” said Tynisha Slaughter, her daughter. “She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

This wasn’t the first time she stopped to help somebody stuck on the side of a road, said people who knew Smith.

As the floods receded Wednesday, Smith’s family gathered to assess their own damage.

Maurice, her son, had left his job about a month ago. He had been living with his mother in the Westchester at Clairmont apartments, but he can’t afford to stay there. He doesn’t know where he’ll go.

For now, Smith’s children are planning their mother’s funeral on Saturday, talking to a lawyer and awaiting Smith’s death certificate.

Tiara Lattimore, 19, is worried about her college education, which her mother was helping to pay for.

“I’ll have to get a job to get through college,” she said.

Tynisha, the oldest daughter, has been going long stretches without saying anything.

“I have to come to terms with this,” she said, looking like she could cry at any minute.

Smith’s children gathered Wednesday in her home. They spread photos of her across a living room table: Smith smiling happily; playing with Maurice when he was about 10; swimming with a friend she had taken into her home.

She grew up in Cleveland and came to Atlanta about 20 years ago. She divorced in 2002 and her ex-husband, George Lattimore, is helping the children through this.

Over the years Smith worked a variety of jobs, from cashier to a home aide for the elderly.

She met Beatrice Hartman when Smith worked in the deli at a Publix. When Hartman was sick, Smith offered to come clean her house for free. The two became friends, Hartman recalled.

For the past three years, Smith has helped care for Hartman’s invalid sister-in-law in Atlanta. Family members believe Smith was headed there Sunday.

“She was truly my best friend,” Hartman said. “She truly wanted to help other people.”