I-70 crash victim remembered as ‘generous and gracious’ person
Allenport woman was driving to work when vehicle was rear-ended by pickup truck
Tori Demo had just dropped her mother off at a hairdresser in the Mon Valley Saturday morning and was on her way to work in Uniontown when a pickup truck rear-ended her vehicle on Interstate 70 in Rostraver Township.
Demo’s maternal grandmother, Monica Giffin, said that when Demo didn’t return to the hairdresser to pick up her mother, Jamie Giffin, they started to become concerned.
An app that the family uses to track the GPS coordinates for a relative’s cellphone placed the device in the vicinity of I-70, and while Monica Giffin was worried, she was also hopeful that maybe it just hadn’t updated her current location yet.
“Yes, she’s on 70. Maybe she’s in a dead zone,” Giffin recalled telling her daughter about the location for Demo, who was on her way to a pet store in Uniontown to perform cleaning work when the crash occurred.
But a state police trooper soon arrived at Monica Giffin’s door in Allenport to deliver the tragic news that Demo, 25, had been killed in the crash after her vehicle was struck in the rear by the pickup truck and rolled over three times and caught fire.
“There was a knock on the door from a trooper and I knew,” Monica Giffin said. “This is such a horrific thing.”
Although state police have released no public details about the crash, including the pickup driver’s name, Giffin said troopers spoke to the family and identified him. She said investigators told them three witnesses on I-70 saw him speeding before he struck Demo’s vehicle, causing her to lose control. The family is now waiting for the Westmoreland County district attorney’s office to decide whether to charge the 22-year-old Belle Vernon man.
Giffin said the family is remembering Demo as “very generous and gracious, who would give you the last buck she had.” Demo lived next to Giffin and her husband, Jim, so they saw their granddaughter nearly all the time and she helped them out whenever she could.
“I’d see Tori every day. She either waves at me or toots the horn,” Giffin said. “She’s very helpful. She does a lot of things for us, and we’re going to miss her.”
Demo, who was a 2017 graduate of California Area High School, recently joined the Roscoe Lions Club and was its youngest member. She had been helping with the club’s bi-annual classic car shows that Jim Giffin organized. Giffin also said her granddaughter adored her two nieces and eventually hoped to have children of her own one day.
“She was a great granddaughter. She helped us so much. She’s so full of life and always happy,” Giffin said. “I don’t know what else to say.”
Funeral arrangements are being handled by Carl J. Spallino Funeral Home in Charleroi, with visitation scheduled from 2 to 7 p.m. Thursday.