A woman coming home from work Friday morning said she witnessed a car matching the description of the Kia that was mangled in a Butler Township crash driving aggressively and erratically moments before the morning incident.

Gretchen Sturm of Butler, a social worker who performs home health care on a part-time basis, said she left a client’s house on Dodds Road in Penn Township at about 7 a.m. and headed for the intersection at Route 8, beside Furniture Galleries.

“All of a sudden, I hear a car come flying up behind me on Dodds Road,” Sturm said.

She was shocked at the aggressive manner in which the older model, light brown car approached the intersection, she said, but could not tell by the view in her rearview mirror whether the driver was a man or woman.

According to Sturm, she and the motorist she observed briefly sat at the intersection until the northbound traffic cleared, then Sturm made the right onto Route 8.

The car behind followed her onto the highway without stopping and immediately got into the passing lane beside her and accelerated, Sturm said.

“Of course, I slowed down, because I thought they were going to make us all wreck,” Sturm said.

The car traveled north and Sturm noticed at the Airport Road intersection that the car was weaving between lanes, she said, in an attempt to get around the other drivers.

“People were putting on their brakes,” Sturm said.

When the car got to the Country Kitchen, just past Airport Road, the driver used the restaurant’s parking lot to pass on the right, she said.

“I was like, ‘I’ve got to call 911 and let them know someone crazy is out here driving,’” Sturm said.

When she crested McBride Hill, Sturm said, she expected to see a crash due to the car’s speed and maniacal path.

Instead, she soon saw the car had already made it to the top of the next hill and many drivers had slowed down, according to Sturm.

“There were a lot of brake lights,” she said.

When Sturm reached the light at Vogel Road near Sheetz, she said, she wondered if the person driving the car was having a medical issue and was trying to get themselves to the hospital.

She said she then noticed traffic slowing down near Decatur Drive.

“I thought ‘This is it. There was an accident,’” Sturm said.

When she reached Bean Street, she said she saw motorists attempting to drive around car parts on Route 8 and a person on the ground with a blanket over them.

“There was a lot of blood,” Sturm said.

She said she then saw the smoking car in the former Days Inn parking lot and the also-smoking engine several feet away.

“I was really kind of shaken up over it, because it’s kind of like you’re watching somebody die,” Sturm said of her Friday morning.

Once Sturm rounded the bend past Greater Butler Mart, she began hearing the sirens from the fire, police and rescue vehicles that were speeding toward the scene.

She was surprised to learn the driver in the crash had hit a utility pole, she said, and not any other vehicles.

“It looked really, really bad,” Sturm said of the crash’s aftermath.