The future could not have been brighter for Isabella Shinn in late 2022.
Months ahead of her high school graduation, the Archbishop Wood High School senior and honor student had been accepted to all of the more than 15 colleges where she applied.
The schools included ones that Isabella only wanted to see if she would get accepted with bigger scholarship offers than her boyfriend and best friend, her mother Donna Carangi Shinn said.
“And she did,” she said.
Isabella planned to major in psychology with a minor in forensics, her mother said. As of early December 2022, she toured four college campuses and appeared to be leaning toward Bloomsburg University.
“I do think she might have landed there,’ Carangi Shinn said.
At her 2023 commencement, it was
her parents who accepted her diploma, cap and gown.
Six months earlier, the bright future Isabella planned ended before it could start, when a week before Christmas she was struck by a car crossing Brownsville Road in Feasterville. She died the next day.
Isabella was walking home after finishing a shift at Bruster’s, a popular ice cream business, across the street from her family’s home, and where she had worked for two years.
The driver who struck Shinn was not charged, but a month after her death, her mother wrote the first letter to Frank Farry, then a newly elected Pennsylvania state senator representing Bucks County’s 6th District. He had attended Isabella’s viewing.
Carangi Shinn shared her concerns about the accident, the lack of pedestrian safety measures on Brownsville Road and advocated for changes to prevent another tragedy.
The posted speed limit on that stretch of Brownsville Road is 35 mph, but there was no crosswalk, stop sign or flashing lights near the ice cream business that is surrounded by residential neighborhoods.
The only sign on the road urging safe driving was one erected in memory of Isabella six months after her death.
Farry responded to her letter almost immediately and started investigating if improvements could be done. But it was not going to be a quick fix.
Brownsville Road is a state-owned road, so PennDOT had to be involved. A formal road study was necessary and funding secured and coordinating timing with other approved and scheduled road improvement work.
In 2023, two months shy of the first anniversary of her death, the blueprints were finalized, Carangi Shinn said. Farry, and state representatives K.C. Tomlinson (R-18) and Joe Hogan (R-142) began work to obtain project funding.
At a Sept. 15 dedication ceremony, the completed improvements were unveiled, including a new pedestrian crosswalk, pedestal-mounted push-button activated rapid flashing warning lights, new sidewalks and a dedication sign in memory of Isabella.
“It was a bittersweet day to finally see this project come to fruition and provide some peace for the Shinn family,” Farry said at the ceremony. “In memory of Isabella, please slow down and drive safely.”
For her family, the pedestrian improvements are a fitting lasting tribute to the positive character and spirit their daughter demonstrated through her short life , Carangi Shinn said.
“Isabella was so much more than what happened to her here,” her mother said during the dedication. “This crosswalk will carry Isabella’s name and her memory, but more importantly I hope it reminds every person that comes through here to slow down and pay attention.”
Crime and Courts Reporter Jo Ciavaglia can be reached at jciavaglia@gannett.com
This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: A Feasterville teen's 2022 death led to making Brownsville Road safer
