Marisa Harris crushed in car by teen’s failed suicide attempt after he jumped from overpass
A woman driving on a Virginia highway was killed Saturday when a teen boy jumped from an overpass in a suicide attempt. The woman, Marisa Harris, was pronounced dead at the scene after her boyfriend, who was in the passenger’s seat and remained uninjured, took control of the car and steered it to safety.
Marisa Harris
The boy, 12, has not been identified and is being treated for life-threatening injuries at Fairfax Inova Hospital.
Virginia State Police explained that the teen fell from the overpass over I-66 in Fairfax County around 4:15 p.m., striking the driver’s side of Marisa Harris’s 2005 Ford Escape.
Harris’s mother told WUSA that her daughter was studying to help children who are battling depression. She said that it was “ironic” that Harris died when a boy she could have helped allegedly tried to take his own life.
The mother told the station that Harris had graduated summa cum laude from Towson University and was studying at a graduate mental health counseling program at Marymount University.
The crash is still under investigation.
According to the Centers for Disease Study and Control, between 1999 and 2015, 711 children aged 12 killed themselves in the US. Of them, 507 were male and 204 female; the lowest rates were in 2007 and 2008, when 25 children committed suicide each year; by 2014 and 2015 that had risen to 68 and 56, respectively.
