Wrecks occur often on that stretch of road By KATE BAILEY The Free Lance-Star Tommy Metts said he knows of at least eight traffic accidents that have occurred in front of his skating center on U.S. 1 in Stafford County since it opened six months ago. “We do have a serious situation here,” said Metts, owner of Cavalier Family Skating Centers U.S.A. Inc. “Every one of those cars [that comes to the center] is loaded with kids.” State Trooper Jessica Jean Cheney died Saturday night after being hit by a Jeep that crested the hill on U.S. 1 in front of the skating center and slammed into her. Cheney was there to direct traffic after a previous wreck in which one vehicle sideswiped another that was waiting to turn left into the skating center from the southbound lane, police said. Metts said he’s talked to county supervisors about asking the Virginia Department of Transportation for help. He said part of the problem is that the speed limit changes from 35 mph in the courthouse area to 55 mph just before the hill in front of the skating center. By the time people crest the hill, they’re going too fast to stop for a car waiting to turn, he said. “Most people are driving 60 [mph] when they come through here,” he said. That’s become a problem with the volume of people entering the skating center, which opened in July. “It’s not unusual for a thousand people to pass through here in a day,” he said. “We have vanloads after vanloads.” Charlie Kilpatrick, an assistant resident engineer for VDOT, said this morning that the department has studied the speeds in that stretch of U.S. 1. He wasn’t in his office this morning because of the holiday, and wasn’t sure of the study’s results. Another study will be done, he said, because of the fatality. That’s standard procedure for VDOT. Aquia District Supervisor Ken Mitchell said he’s had several phone calls from area residents worried about the danger of people turning in and out at the skating center. He said he’s asked VDOT officials to consider lowering the speed limit there. Mitchell said Saturday’s fatality “is proof again that it needs to be looked into.” Supervisor Ferris M. Belman said the facility is a popular one and he would like to see something done to improve the road conditions in front of it. “There’s no reason VDOT can’t get in there and try to make that safer,” he said, “even if the county has to get in there and help out.”

Trooper Jessica Jean Cheney wasn’t staring down the barrel of a masked man’s revolver or dodging gunfire in a police shootout when her life ended Saturday night.

Instead, the young state police trooper was preparing to direct traffic around an accident when she was hit by a Jeep.

It was the kind of thing that could have happened to anyone.

“We all just wish it could have been us and not her,” Trooper Eric Futrell said last night.

Cheney, 23, was called to help direct traffic after cars collided on U.S. 1 near the Cavalier Family Skating Centers U.S.A. Inc. She had parked her cruiser in the right northbound lane, which had been closed to traffic, and walked across to the southbound lanes. She was standing in the left southbound lane when a Jeep Eagle that had just changed lanes crested a hill and hit her, state police 1st Sgt. Mike Ivey said.

The woman driving the Jeep had apparently switched lanes to avoid the police cars and rescue vehicles parked on the shoulder of the road, police said. Ivey said Cheney apparently thought the southbound lanes had been closed to traffic.

She was thrown through the Jeep’s windshield. Both of her arms and legs were broken. She also sustained severe head and internal injuries, Ivey said.

Cheney was flown by helicopter to Inova Fairfax Hospital, where doctors at first thought they would have to amputate one of her legs, state police spokeswoman Mary Evans said.

Cheney was pronounced dead at 9:20 p.m.

About 50 people, including family, friends and co-workers, were at the hospital to hear the news.

The woman driving the Jeep, 30-year-old Dorothy Ann Frantum of Fredericksburg, was not charged.

“As far as we know, she will not be charged,” Evans said.

Police are still investigating the accident.

Cheney started her job with the Virginia State Police on June 14, 1996. She was assigned to the Fredericksburg area office on U.S. 1 near Harrison Road. Futrell was one of her field training officers.

“What she lacked in experience she made up for in hard work and spirit,” Futrell said last night. “If I had to draw troopers to work with, I would have taken her gut and her ethics over people with 20 years of experience.”

Cheney always wanted to be a state trooper. Law enforcement runs in her family.

Her mother, Sue Cheney, is a state police dispatcher in Richmond. Her father, Richard Cheney, works as a weight enforcement officer for the state police at the truck scales on U.S. 301 in Dahlgren. And her sister, Romaine, is a dispatcher with the Henrico Police Department.

Cheney, an Aylett native and a 1992 graduate of King William High School, worked as a dispatch call-taker for the state police until she turned 21, the minimum age for training at the State Police Academy, Evans said. She had earned an associate’s degree from J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College in 1995.

Trooper Connie Bowen met Cheney at the academy. The two started on the same day, Dec. 1, 1995, and were assigned to be roommates. They ended up as best friends, and were both assigned to the local office.

“We both had to get all our hair cut off at the same time, and ever since we’ve been letting it grow out together,” Bowen said last night. “We’ve just been inseparable.”

When the two weren’t working together, they were often eating dinner out—The Italian Oven was one of their favorite places—or just talking on the phone.

“We paged each other all the time,” Bowen said. “There wasn’t one thing she didn’t know about me, and I don’t think there’s anything I didn’t know about her.”

None of Cheney’s co-workers ever questioned her devotion to the job, and they all knew they could count on her if they needed to.

“She was a hard worker,” Ivey said. “She was just learning her trade. She didn’t have a chance to complete the task.”

The day after Cheney died, Futrell was talking with a woman whose son works with a rescue squad in Stafford County. She said her son came home Friday after being at an accident scene with Cheney.

“He said, ‘Trooper Cheney had to yell at me three times to get out of the road’” to avoid being hit by passing vehicles, Futrell said. “She was very safety-conscious.”

Cheney was a rescue squad volunteer in Spotsylvania County. Capt. John Brandup said she had been volunteering in Spotsylvania for about a year and a half. Before that, she volunteered with a rescue squad in Hanover County.

“She was a regular volunteer, and she would also come in anytime somebody called and needed a fill-in,” Brandup said. “I’ve got some very, very upset members. I think everybody just loved her.”

Cheney’s relationship with several of her co-workers extended beyond work. Futrell was one of her friends off the job.

“I’ll miss talking to her,” he said. “Even when I had a bad day, I knew I could come home and call Jessica and she’d be good for a few jokes.”

Bowen and Futrell helped Cheney move into her new ranch-style home in North Ridge subdivision in September. Cheney immediately put up a chain-link fence so her golden cocker spaniel, Buddy, could run around the yard. She was even thinking about getting a second dog, Futrell said.

“She loved animals,” he said.

Cheney was still working to decorate her new home, but had finished painting and was mostly settled, Bowen said. She enjoyed collecting Coca-Cola memorabilia, much of which she displayed in her kitchen. And recently she had taken up oil painting. She chose a lighthouse as her first subject.

“She was so proud of that lighthouse,” Bowen said.

All the troopers and supervisors at the local state police office gathered yesterday afternoon to talk about the accident. The supervisors told the troopers that area deputies would handle their calls on Wednesday so that all of them could attend Cheney’s funeral in Ashland.

“There were a lot of tears,” Trooper Shannon Davis said. “I think everyone is still pretty much in shock.”

They aren’t ready to say goodbye to the young, energetic trooper who was always ready with a joke or a funny story.

“No matter how bad her day was, no matter how tough her work got,” said Futrell, his voice choked with tears, “when she put her key in the office door and walked in, she always had a smile on her face.”

“I shall consider no sacrifice too great in the performance of my duties.”
—Virginia State Police trooper’s pledge

HENRICO COUNTY—Jessica Cheney was willing to make the sacrifice.

The badge was worth it.

That shiny, silver piece of metal had been her goal since she was a girl.

Yesterday, she was surrounded by hundreds of those badges. Each striped with a tiny black band.

Law enforcement officers from Virginia and Maryland packed Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in Henrico County to say goodbye to the 23-year-old trooper who lost her life on the job in Stafford County on Saturday.

“Jessica did not die on that highway,” Sgt. Robert Pinkard told mourners during the funeral. “She got a transfer. She was transferred from Division 5 to the Division of Heaven.”

Cheney died from injuries caused when a Jeep Eagle slammed into her as she was standing on U.S. 1 shortly after 5 p.m. She had been preparing to direct traffic around a prior wreck.

Since her graduation from the state police academy on June 14, 1996, Cheney had been assigned to Division 5, the Fredericksburg area office of the Virginia State Police. Pinkard is a supervisor and chaplain there.

“I don’t consider myself Jessica’s boss,” he said. “Jessica was my friend.”

Pinkard remembered how Cheney looked each time she walked through the office door.

“She always had a smile on her face, and there was a bounce in her step,” he said.

The two often talked, and not only about work. Pinkard told a story of one day when Cheney approached him with a personal dilemma.

“She said, ‘Sergeant, I’ve got a problem,’” Pinkard said. She then told him, “I’m afraid I don’t know if something happens to me if I’ll go to heaven.”

As Pinkard recalled how he sat down with Cheney and the Bible that day, officers seated in the church pews and lined against the walls wiped away tears. Some shook with sobs.

“Jessica Cheney is not in that box,” Pinkard said as he stood near her smooth white coffin at the front of the church. “She’s gone to a better place.”

In heaven, he said: “She won’t need bulletproof vests. She won’t need weapons.”

Cheney is the first female trooper to die on the job since 1988, when Jacqueline Vernon was killed in Fairfax. Vernon was hit by a bus as she was standing behind her car door at a traffic stop.

Gov. Jim Gilmore and Lt. Gov. John Hager were among those in attendance at Cheney’s funeral. Hundreds of others, including firefighters, rescue workers and law enforcement officers, huddled outside the packed church, listening to the service as it was broadcast over a loudspeaker.

The Rev. Michael Duffy, Cheney’s priest during her teen-age years, delivered the homily.

“To be 23½ years old when you die seems a waste,” he said. “We feel cheated. But St. Paul says no one will separate Jessica from us.”

The hour-and-a-half-long Mass led to an equally long procession from the church to Signal Hill Memorial Park in Hanover County. A seemingly endless line of police motorcycles, cruisers, ambulances and fire trucks—all with lights flashing—crawled along the rural, two-lane road. Stretching over six miles, they had come from everywhere—Fredericksburg, Stafford County, Spotsylvania County, Virginia Beach, Fauquier County, Arlington, Fairfax, Henrico County, Rockville, Md., Montgomery, Md., Prince William County. ...

Some local rescue squads stopped their ambulances along the road. Squad members stood at attention outside as the procession motored past.

State police estimated the crowd at more than a thousand. Some police officials said it was the largest they’d ever seen.

Cheney’s parents also work for the state police, and her sister, Romaine, is a police dispatcher in Henrico County.

At the cemetery, a mass of dark uniforms and hats sprawled out from all sides of the royal blue tent pitched above Cheney’s gravesite. As the officers stood at attention in a unified salute, her coffin was gently lowered to the ground by members of the state police honor guard. The long, white box was draped with a dark blue Virginia flag.

“Our sister Jessica has now gone to rest,” the Rev. Thomas McDonnell said before sprinkling holy water on the coffin.

When he finished his prayer, a lone trumpeter played the mournful strains of “Taps.”

That was followed by a bagpipe rendition of “Amazing Grace,” as the honor guard slowly folded the flag into a tight blue triangle, carefully creasing every edge. The flag was passed to Col. Wayne Huggins, who handed it to Gilmore to give to Cheney’s mother, Sue.

Cheney’s father, Richard, consoled his wife as she wept into a pink-trimmed handkerchief.

Moments later, Huggins handed Richard Cheney a second Virginia flag.

As the Cheneys sat clutching the blue triangles, the honor guard made a sharp, synchronized quarter-turn, then slowly, silently, walked away.

State trooper dedicated her life to helping others in need

On Saturday evening, a tragic accident occurred on U.S. 1 in the Stafford Courthouse area.
Virginia State Police Trooper Jessica Cheney was engaged in performing a routine day-to-day task of public safety officers. As a result of doing the job that she wanted to do for all of her all-too-short life, Jessica suffered a series of fatal injuries and is now one more of many officers killed in the line of duty.
The job of all public safety officers—state troopers, county deputies, police officers, firefighters, emergency medical technicians or communications officers—runs from the simple, boring routine to critical, highly charged, life-threatening situations. Unfortunately, one can turn into the other in a microsecond. This, we should never forget.
More often than not, the typical incident is mundane. Trooper Cheney was involved in a routine investigation. As always, she put herself in harm’s way for the public she was sworn and dedicated to serve and protect. She did not know this was her last call. She did not know she would not make it home after this shift.
Every day public safety officers go to work and leave their families at home, and they accept the fact that they may not make it back. With every incident they respond to, they accept the fact that even the most routine call may go bad fast and may be their last. We accept that; we just don’t expect it.
Trooper Cheney accepted that as part of a family of public safety officers. She would not have wanted it any other way. She just didn’t expect it.
Her fellow troopers, deputies, emergency medical technicians and firefighters at the incident didn’t expect it. Now, our family of public- safety officers is in shock and grieving.
We have lost one of our own, one who was too young, too devoted and too motivated to leave us so early in life.
Yet, even now, public safety officers are out at those routine, mundane, day-to-day incidents, and they are also as ready as they can be for those critical, life-threatening situations.
Now, as people see us on the streets and in our communities, I hope they will remember our commitment and dedication to their public safety.
I hope they will remember Jessica Cheney’s commitment and dedication and wish for good things for her family by birth and for her family by profession. I hope people will be grateful that individuals like her are there for routine emergencies and for life-threatening emergencies. We will appreciate those thoughts.

CHARLIE ROBERTSON