36-year-old Lateisha Johnson was released from prison earlier this year following a fatal 2004 accident for which she just finished serving nearly 5 years, according to her neighbors in Logan.
"She was just trying to make a better life for her and he daughter," one neighbor said.
According to police, Johnson was driving home around midnight Thursday with her 15-year-old daughter in the car.
She somehow lost control of the black Infinity I-30.
The car, police say, sped up the embankment along the westbound ramp from I-76 to Roosevelt Boulevard and went over the side. It hit the ground below with such force, it bounced back up into a tree.
The car became tangled and remained hidden from tens of thousands of passing cars for hours.
Shortly after the accident, police found Johnson's daughter, badly bloodied, walking along the Schuylkill Expressway.
At first, the teen was so disoriented she first told investigators she'd been abducted. It wasn't until hours later she even remembered the accident and alerted doctors, who told police where to look for the car.
Lateisha Johnson was still inside the car where she likely was killed on impact.
"Devastated, cause there was a bunch of us that all grew up together, we all sit on the steps and talk about any and every topic," one neighbor said.
The accident tied up traffic for hours and for miles in every direction.
Tow truck operators took care in removing the car in order to remove the body.
The reason for Johnson's imprisonment was a 2005 conviction of driving under the influence in an accident that killed another person.
Police are not sure what caused this accident as of yet.
The daughter told police her mother suffered from epilepsy and might have suffered an epileptic seizure in the moments before the attack.
Police do say excessive speed was absolutely a factor.