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BRUCEVILLE-EDDY - A 17-year-old Bruceville-Eddy woman was killed when a hit-and-run driver struck her and her 19-year-old fiance as they walked along the Interstate 35 frontage road after Mayfest on Friday night, a witness to the accident said.

Karen Cowan, 57, was getting into her car at about 10:30 p.m. after working her shift at the CEFCO gas station along the highway when she saw the car hit the teens.

“I called the ambulance, but there wasn’t a whole lot we could do,” Ms. Cowan said. “We just had to get some help.”

A few hours before the accident, Ms. Cowan saw Bree Bechener of Bruceville-Eddy and James Nolan of Valley Mills when they came into the gas station to talk with Miss Bechener’s brother, who is also a CEFCO employee.

The two had just come from Mayfest, an annual get-together that hosts a chili cookoff and provides booths set up by local vendors.

“Everybody was down there partying,” Ms. Cowan said.

They went back to Mayfest and were again returning to the gas station to meet Miss Bechener’s brother after his shift ended.

“They were coming to get him so he could join them,” Ms. Cowan said.

That’s when the car hit them, said Cowan, who tried to get them help.

“There just happened to be a Scott & White ambulance stopped at the gas station getting some snacks,” she said. “I steered them over that way, so they could have immediate help.”

Not too much time later a justice of the peace was pronouncing Miss Bechener dead and the paramedics were rushing Nolan to the hospital.

“He (Nolan) had surgery, which is good, but he’s out of it now,” she said. “I’m still waiting on word about that, but his family is all up there with him.”

The two young people had been anxiously awaiting their upcoming wedding that was set to take place in three weeks, Cowan said.

“She’s an Eddy kid, but she had been living with her mother somewhere else. She had come back down here to live with her father and get married.”

Funeral expenses are said to be paid for, but the community is gathering donations to put up a cross at the site of the accident.

“It’s so sad being so close to Mother’s Day and all,” she said. “It’s sad for her mother to be without her.”

As a family and community mourns the loss of a daughter, Cowan said the only solace they have is that the man who hit the teens has been apprehended by police.

“The gentleman was caught between Little River and Belton,” she said.

That could not be confirmed because the Bruceville-Eddy Police Department declined to comment.