By Mike Barnhardt
Enterprise Record

It was a regular Wednesday morning for Lelia DeLucia.
She left her home in the Hickory Hill development east of Mocksville, heading for some volunteer work at A Storehouse for Jesus. As usual, she was making a couple of extra turns to give her more sight distance when she reached the hilly and busy US 64 East.
She was almost there when the engine to her vehicle began to race, and the vehicle began to go faster. She pushed the brake – it kept going faster.
“I was approaching a stop sign. I prayed real hard that nobody would be coming,” she said.
One direction – the highway. Another direction – a brick pillar to a driveway. Another direction – a split rail fence and trees.
“I believe I made a conscious decision to take the tree and not the highway,” she said. “I couldn’t stop, and I was worried about hurting someone.”
She roared through the fence and the car slammed into a tree. She suffered a broken bone in her neck, along with bruising and scrapes from the air bags.
Her husband, Rick, said the car hit the tree so hard that the back end went up into the air and rotated.
She had been gone from home for only a minute. The ordeal with the racing engine only lasted seconds before the wreck.
Lelia said she felt comfort from the tree, with the branches …