Amputee won’t be billed for guardrail that cut off leg

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation on Thursday withdrew a $2,509.42 bill it sent to an Illinois woman whose leg was severed in a January crash on Interstate 80 in Mercer County.

The department notified Marzena Mulawka that it was waiving the bill for guardrail damage, spokesman Rich Kirkpatrick said.

Mulawka crashed on a snowy night in January after her car was struck by a tractor-trailer. Her right leg was severed and she suffered numerous other injuries that required eight surgeries, five months of hospitalization and extensive rehabilitation. In August, she was stunned to receive an invoice demanding reimbursement for damage to the guardrail, which she said had pierced her vehicle and severed her leg.

"When we made the initial decision , we didn't have the full story," Kirkpatrick said. The reversal came after a review of additional information provided by the victim.

"It's a formal process," he said of the review. "That's why it wasn't done instantaneously."

"That's wonderful," Mulawka said from Murfreesboro, Tenn., where she is staying with her sister while she completes physical therapy.

Mulawka and two witnesses said the crash on the snowy night of Jan. 3 occurred after a tractor-trailer rammed her vehicle in Lackawannock, just east of the Ohio line. She was moving from her home in Chicago to New York, where she planned to take a job as a forensic scientist.

Her vehicle struck the end of a guardrail with such force that it pierced the driver's door and severed her right leg. The crash also shattered her left leg, pelvis and back.

The truck did not stop. Joe and Tricia Stewart, a Philadelphia couple, came to Mulawka's aid, packing her wounds with snow during a two-hour wait for paramedics to respond to their 911 call.

Mulawka spent five months in Pittsburgh hospitals and had eight surgeries, bone, muscle and skin grafts and an assortment of titanium plates and screws implanted. She has nearly completed her physical therapy and said this week that doctors were on the verge of allowing her to resume running, a passion of hers before the crash.

In August, PennDOT sent the invoice for guardrail damage. Mulawka replied with a 2,000-word e-mail to the department this month describing the crash and her outrage at being billed. She also sent copies of hospital bills and X-rays.

" should be ashamed for being such a cold-blooded and unprofessional organization. This bill is simply atrocious," she wrote.

In an e-mail notice on Thursday withdrawing the bill, PennDOT apologized to her and said it had initially concluded from a police report that Mulawka was driving too fast for conditions and that no other vehicle was involved in the crash.

Mulawka disputed the report, prepared by the Pennsylvania State Police. She said the investigating officer had not interviewed her or the Stewarts, the only witnesses. Instead, the officer wrote that her vehicle "somehow left the roadway."