The family of a 61-year-old Alexandria woman who was killed in a smoky Metro tunnel earlier this week is eternally grateful to a man who tried to save her life.
Dozens of people were trapped for more than 40 minutes as smoke filled the L'Enfant Plaza Metro station tunnel just before rush hour Monday. Video from those aboard shows passengers coughing and lying on the ground, searching for fresh air.
One of those riders was Carol Inman Glover, who had slumped to the floor unconscious. Fellow passenger Jonathan Rogers, 31, and two other passengers tried in vain for 20 minutes to revive Glover.
"We know you do chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth, so that's what we did," Rogers said. "Nothing was happening, and she was laying there unconscious. Somebody took her pulse and said they couldn't feel a pulse."
Rogers said a man scooped the woman up in his arms and carried her through the cars toward the back of the train.
"I can't tell you how that does so much for me to have had him be there for her and do what he did. It restores my faith in humanity. It really does," Glover's brother Tracy Inman said.
Before his sister's death, Jan. 12 was already a tragic day for Inman and Glover: Their father died that day 33 years prior, in 1982, of smoke inhalation in a D.C. house fire.
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Carol Glover was a mother of two sons and a grandmother to three. She had worked at DKW Communications Inc. in downtown D.C. for the past 18 months, commuting on Metro daily. She grew up in Northeast D.C. with two brothers and a sister.
"When I saw it on the news, I spoke out, and there was some compassion that came over me. And I didn't know who the person was, and I said, 'Wow, someone's family member will not be coming home to them tonight," Glover's sister Donna Perry said.
Glover's mother told News4 her daughter suffered from asthma, but always carried her inhaler. She's adamant Glover's death had nothing to do with the asthma.
"The smoke [killed her]," Corrine Inman said, adding she believes her daughter's death will lead to safety improvements for Metro. "[Carol's] purpose was to make a change somewhere in somebody else's life. This is the change. Change is coming."
