Kin, friends mourn woman killed in Green Line accident
She wanted to pursue a career in accounting, and driving a Green Line trolley for the MBTA was a way to get there. The job paid well and gave her flexible hours, so she could attend classes at Roxbury Community College.
Terrese Edmonds, who loved reading novels and listening to Jay-Z, never felt unsafe driving her D branch trolley. Yesterday, her close-knit family in Roxbury was in mourning, trying to understand how a woman who they said was a careful driver died when the trolley she was operating slammed into another trolley in Newton on Wednesday.
"She's one of the best drivers I've ever known," said Alison Crumb, a 24-year-old cousin whom Edmonds picked up and drove back from Temple University in Philadelphia on Saturday. "I don't know what happened there. The girl could drive."
As federal investigators tried to determine what caused the crash, including the possibility that Edmonds was talking on a cellphone, her relatives and friends consoled one another with recollections of a funny, outgoing woman who worked hard to make a better life for herself.
Edmonds, 24, lived in the apartment where she grew up with an older brother, an older sister, and her mother in Roxbury. She was also close to her father, Terry Jones, who lives in the neighborhood.
As a child, she played hopscotch, four square, and hide-and-seek with her siblings and cousins in the courtyard of the circular complex. Among friends, she was known for cracking jokes.
"She could find comedy in everything," Crumb said. "When we were young, we would tell her: 'Stop laughing! What are you laughing at?' "
Edmonds went to Agassiz Elementary School in Jamaica Plain, Wilson Middle School in Dorchester, and Lewis Middle School in Roxbury.
She went on to South Boston High School, but dropped out in 10th grade.
For a time, Edmonds did clerical work in an office at her apartment complex, Warren Gardens, relatives said. Then she set her sights on a job with the MBTA and completed her high school diploma, which is required of all trolley operators.
In August, she got the job, completed a seven-week training program, and passed a test showing she knew how to operate a trolley and read track signals. On Oct. 7, she started driving on the Green Line.
"We were all very happy for her when she got the job," Crumb said. "She went for it, she worked for it, and she got it."
Jones said his daughter wanted the job because she told him, "Daddy, I want to be independent," and the T was a way to make her dream possible. Just recently, he said, she went from working for the T part time to driving full time, Monday to Friday.
"She didn't have problems at the job, she told me she liked the job, and she said, 'Things are looking up for me, Daddy,' " Jones said yesterday. "And I told her to hang in there with the job - it's a good job with decent benefits - and just hang in there."
She was never far from family, even during the workweek. Jones took lunches to his daughter on her breaks. Edmonds' brother, Leon, greeted her when she came home after work.
"She's funny, she's goofy, and I love her," Leon Edmonds, 30, told WBZ outside the family's apartment yesterday. "She just makes everything around brighten up when she comes around."
Crumb said her cousin had been planning to work for the MBTA this summer and continue her studies at Roxbury Community College.
"She was just trying to better her life," Crumb said. "She wanted good things."
Crumb recalled taking long car trips with her cousin, to Pittsburgh and other places.
Registry of Motor Vehicles records show that Edmonds had a clean driving record except for one accident in Dorchester in January 2004, when she caused more than $1,000 in damage and was found to be more than 50 percent at fault.
Registry officials said details of the accident were not immediately available.
On Saturday, Edmonds drove Crumb back from Temple, where she is studying magazine journalism. But they did not head straight to Roxbury.
Instead, they stopped in New York to take in the sights. They saw Harlem, and ate cheesecake at Junior's in Brooklyn, a borough which Edmonds made sure they visited because it was where Jay-Z grew up.
Alison Crumb said she talked last to Edmonds on Wednesday at 2 p.m., when she called her on a break just to say hello and "tease her," as she often did.
Only a few hours later, she learned that her cousin had died. "We're going to miss her so much," Alison Crumb said. "It's like a part of our crew is gone now."
Yesterday, she spoke in the kitchen of her family's apartment, directly across the courtyard from where Edmonds lived. In the hall were her suitcases from college. Her mother, Naomi Crumb, was also at home, showing off a photo of Edmonds.
"I woke up this morning and thought of Scripture: You can't enter the kingdom of heaven unless you become like a child," Naomi Crumb, who is Edmonds's aunt, said, her cheeks streaked with tears.
"She was always bubbly as a child."
David Abel and Andrew Ryan of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Michael Levenson can be reached at mlevenson@globe.com. 