A civil suit against Orchid residents Elizabeth and Paul Danielsen filed by Frances Ingraham and the estate of her late husband Christopher – a John’s Island couple in their 80s whose lives were totally upended by a crash on A1A three years ago – may be concluded by today.

But as attorneys for the plaintiffs appeared to be wrapping up their case last week, proceedings ended for the Memorial Day break on a somber note with Frances Ingraham giving her firsthand account of events surrounding the May 10, 2022, crash while a half-dozen or so friends and neighbors watched from courtroom pews.

Ingraham, now 84, told how she and her husband the day of the crash had hit some range balls at the Riomar Country Club golf course, had a picnic, went home to change, then returned to the Riomar Beach Club for dinner. They were driving back home just after sunset, with Frances Ingraham behind the wheel.

“Just about past the Village Shops on A1A, I was initiating the turn to go into John’s Island at the South Gate. And there was suddenly this big white light. And a wham. And then another wham. And then a third wham. And we stopped,” she said.

The Ingrahams’ car, according to earlier testimony by a security guard on duty nearby, was smashed in the back apparently from a rear-end collision, then vaulted over a median and slammed into a retaining wall.

Witnesses, including a Registered Nurse on her way home to Indian Trails from a shift at Cleveland Clinic who stopped to render aid to Danielsen, testified that a second car, a black Mercedes convertible, was smashed in the front from an apparent frontal collision. It ended up lodged in bushes on the west side of A1A near where some utility trucks were setting up for night work.

The Mercedes, driven by Elizabeth Jewkes-Danielsen, was traveling 87 miles per hour in a 45 mile-per-hour zone when she collided with the Ingrahams’ vehicle, police said and her blood-alcohol level tested out at three times the legal limit for driving under the influence in Florida.

Electronic records from the vehicle show Jewkes-Danielsen’s maximum speed a split-second before the crash was 93 miles per hour.

The Bermuda Bay Oceanside’s security guard’s frenzied 911 call following the crash was played for the jury on May 21.

“The EMTs came, and I think they took Chris first,” Frances Ingraham recalled. “I remember the shears, and them cutting me out of my clothes just to get me out of there, out of the driver’s seat.

“And I remember vividly the ambulance ride. It was a long one,” she said, adding that she “felt every pothole” from Indian River Shores to HCA Florida Lawnwood Hospital Trauma Center.

“I remember the back opening and being wheeled in. Then I don’t remember anything.”

After undergoing surgeries for serious injuries to her leg, arm and neck, Frances Ingraham’s hospital bed was moved into a room with husband Chris, “so I could hold hands with him. So I could talk to him. He could hear me because he was holding my hand,” she said.

“What did you say to him?” asked attorney Dane Ullian.

“I just told him I loved him. And that it’s going to be all right,” she said.

But it wasn’t all right. Christopher Ingram, 89, died on May 18 from his injuries. Frances Ingraham said she knew the end was near when hospital staff removed her husband’s feeding tube.

“And then they came in and said to me, all right now, I’m releasing you. You’re going to Encompass. I got there at night. So I think it was all the same day,” she said, recalling the shock of finding herself very alone at the skilled nursing facility.

It took eight months of procedures, skin grafting, wound care and physical therapy for Ingraham to heal, but she pushed herself to learn to walk again in three months.

The Ingrahams had recently purchased a new summer cottage in Rhode Island, and had been looking forward to enjoying it after closing up their John’s Island residence for the summer.

“They were having a service for Chris up in Rhode Island at the end of August, and I wanted to go. And I wanted to walk down the aisle of the church without, you know, no walker, no cane. On my own steam,” the 84-year-old said.

Elizabeth Jewkes-Danielsen is being sued for negligence leading to the wrongful death of Christopher Ingraham, and to the serious injury of Frances Ingraham. She pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide in criminal court earlier this month and is awaiting sentencing on June 13.

Paul Danielsen is being sued for auto negligence under a more challenging set of allegations to prove, that he and his wife were driving recklessly “in concert” or racing northbound on A1A after leaving the Polo Grill on Ocean Drive, thus contributing to the deadly crash. First-on-scene witnesses who testified said they only saw one or both of the crashed vehicles, not a third vehicle allegedly racing up A1A.

Ingraham recently amended the lawsuits deleting medical bills, focusing only on punitive damages. The plaintiffs and two defendants are being represented by a total of eight attorneys, as each of the Danielsens has a separate defense, and plaintiffs brought a third attorney in specifically to assist in the jury selection process.

Judge Cynthia Cox told jurors she expected closing arguments to conclude and the case to go to the jury this past Wednesday, with a slight chance of finishing Tuesday afternoon. Should the jury rule in favor of the plaintiffs, a second stage determining the amount of the award would occur following the verdict in the four different lawsuits consolidated for trial.