Vigil honors pedestrian killed in crash

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) - Friends and family held a prayer vigil for 54-year-old Ida Murphy Sunday night where they cried, prayed, and held each other while grieving for and missing a woman who was a caretaker to this entire community.

Murphy died on the corner of Riley and Fillmore Thursday night, when a suspected drunk driver, who had been shot by police, crashed into three light poles.

Fifty-four-year-old Ida Murphy was a woman of faith, and she volunteered religiously at Antioch Baptist Church on Fillmore Avenue.

She worked in the food pantry and also did the toy giveaway for needy children every year at Christmastime.

A friend of Murphy's who organized this vigil, Fredean Anderson Honeycutt says Murphy watched over all the children in these neighborhoods as if they were one of her own grandkids.

She loved them, and others could tell from the notes read at her makeshift memorial, they loved her, too.

Honeycutt says, "She had a beautiful personality. She loved to laugh and what I'm always going to remember of her, is that she loved the children in the community. There has not been a summer that has passed, in the last eight years, that Ida did not have at least 15 to 20 kids walking up Fillmore, going to the free lunches in the Martin Luther King Park."

One of many ways people who love Ida Murphy are honoring her legacy, is by renaming the toy giveaway at Antioch Baptist Church on December 15th.