Neighbors Seek to Move Mailboxes After 100-Year-Old Woman Struck by Car

Neighbors on Maple Street Extension in Moon have renewed efforts to have their mailboxes relocated after a car struck a 100-year-old woman on the street. 

Emily Kearse, 100, was hit by a car on Nov. 29, while she was checking her mail on the 1200 block of Maple Street Extension. 

Kearse said she walked across the street to her mailbox at about 2 p.m. that day when a motorist traveling uphill struck her, knocking her down and breaking her ankle in two places. 

"I just couldn't believe it," said Kearse's daughter Chiquita Clark, of Moon Township. 

Residents of the street say the placement of their mailboxes, which are lined on one side of the narrow, hillside roadway, poses a safety hazard. The posted speed limit on the street is 35 miles per hour. 

As many as a dozen cars a minute pass by the 1200 block of the street, said Linda Waltermire, who lives two houses down from Kearse. 

"It's hilly, it's curvy, it's a state-maintained road," Waltermire said. "Three years ago, I got petitions from residents requesting that they move our mailboxes. And it went no where." 

Residents on the street need approval from PennDOT and the United States Postal Service to move the mailboxes. 

Waltermire, who appealed to Moon Township's Board of Supervisors on the issue earlier this month, said she hopes Kearse's injury prompts action from Post Office officials. 

She said she intends to circulate another petition and begin writing elected officials on the matter. 

Postal Service spokesman Tad Kelley could not be reached for comment. 

"When we go to get our mail, we literally take our life in our hands," said Waltermire, who has lived on Maple Street Extension for 38 years. "My children used to run across the street to get our mail. And (Kearse) could have been killed." 

Kearse, who is recovering at home with a boot cast on her left leg, said she hopes the Postal Service intervenes and relocates the mailboxes. 

The long-time township resident was presented with a proclamation from Moon officials earlier this year in honor of her 100th birthday. 

"It gets worse every year," Kearse said. "I do hope they move the mailboxes over so we have them on our side of the street. That seems like the natural and logical thing to do."