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Kentucky woman says she was left ‘for dead’ after truck hit her on Preston Highway

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    LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (WLKY) — A Louisville woman says she is recovering from serious injuries after she was hit by a truck while walking along Preston Highway and then left in the road as the driver pulled away.

Jadore Kelly said she was heading to a store Friday before the holiday weekend when she and her dog, Chloe, were standing in the median on Preston Highway. Kelly said her car had been flooded in recent storms, so she was walking instead.

“I’m screaming, ‘Please help me. Please help me,’ and I just couldn’t move my body,” Kelly said.

Kelly said she does not remember the moment of impact clearly.

“I can’t even explain to you exactly what happened. All I know is that my body flew,” she said.

She said a truck hit both her and her dog, leaving them badly hurt.

“Everything went white and I just tried to scream for help, and my audio kind of went out as well,” Kelly said. “I couldn’t really hear anything. And the next thing you know, I’m just screaming.”

At first, she said, she did not realize a truck had hit her.

“It felt like there was a knife or a saw or something that went through my chest,” Kelly said. “But at the time, I didn’t know that was three broken ribs.”

Kelly said she suffered broken ribs, a broken femur, internal bleeding, cuts, bruises and lacerations.

“We don’t deserve these broken ribs and lacerations and cuts and bruises and internal bleeding and broken femurs,” she said. “We didn’t deserve that. And I definitely didn’t deserve to be left for dead in the middle of the street in 100-degree weather on Friday, laying on my back screaming for help.”

Her family later obtained surveillance video from a nearby business. It shows the driver stopping, getting out of the truck, looking at Kelly, then getting back in.

“For me to understand that, he looked me in my face. He did nothing. It crushes my heart,” Kelly said.

She said the experience has left her hurt but not bitter.

“You literally saw what you did to me,” Kelly said. “He was OK doing that. This world is so messed up. But you know what it makes me want to do? It makes me want to give more. It doesn’t make me angry. It doesn’t make me have hatred in my heart. It makes me want to go harder for people.”

Kelly’s family said investigators have spoken with the suspect and turned paperwork over to the Commonwealth’s Attorney. No arrest had been made as of the latest update.

“Right now, it doesn’t seem like there’s any empathy for the people that are supposed to get justice for me,” Kelly said.

As she recovers, Kelly said she hopes safety improvements are made along the busy stretch of Preston Highway, where a TARC stop and nearby businesses bring regular foot traffic.

She said more protections are needed before someone else gets hurt.

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Dolly Parton’s 9-to-5 was uniting the country

(CNN) — At a time when no American celebrity seems immune from the country’s many divisions, Dolly Parton was a crossover icon who stayed neutral in the culture wars while still speaking her mind.Her style was adopted by the LGBTQ community and is celebrated in drag shows.She starred in a feminist comedy and became an icon for feminists, but didn’t use that word to describe herself. She preferred “woman in business.”She laughed about her plastic surgery and said the joke was on the public.She talked about her deep faith and lent her name to a wholesome family-friendly theme park in her home state of Tennessee.She did all of this without seeming to offend anyone. Country music fans, pop music fans, Republicans, Democrats, presidents, faith leaders and drag queens all genuinely mourned her passing Tuesday.President Donald Trump announced after her death that flags will be lowered to half-staff to mourn her passing, an honor he has denied to perceived enemies.“There has never been anyone like her, and never will,” Trump said in a statement posted on social media.Former President Barack Obama seemed shocked when he was asked by then-“Late Show” host Stephen Colbert in 2020 why he hadn’t given Parton a presidential medal of freedom.“I’m shocked,” Obama said. “That was a screw-up.” He assumed she’d already been honored with the nation’s highest civilian honor.Parton worked hard to appeal to everyone.When it was erroneously reported she had endorsed Hillary Clinton against Trump in 2016, she issued a clarifying post on social media, saying that while she supported having a woman in the White House, it was not a nod to Clinton.“I try not to get political but if I am, I might as well just run myself ‘cause I’ve got the hair for it, it’s huge, and they could always use more boobs in the race,” she wrote, adding. “But seriously, I have not decided who I’m voting for, but no matter what we’re gonna be suffering from PMS, Presidential Mood Swings.”That doesn’t mean she wouldn’t take any positions. When access to bathrooms for transgender people was in the news in 2016, she suggested to CNN that people should be able to use the restroom where they felt comfortable.“I try not to get too caught up in the controversy of things,” she said, adding, “I hope everybody gets a chance to be who and what they are.”But then she added the kind of plain-spoken Dollyism that pierced through the debate.“I just know if I have to pee, I’m going to pee. I don’t care where it’s going to be.”Her popularity was exceptional. When the University of Massachusetts and YouGov surveyed 1,000 people in April about their views of a random assortment of people with global fame, Parton had, by far, the strongest net favorability of +65%, a figure that included strong majorities of both liberals and conservatives.The next most popular person on the list was Obama, with +14%. Trump was in negative territory, along with former President Joe Biden.“I have as many Republican fans as I do Democrats,” Parton told USA Today in 2020. “I don’t want to offend anybody, I have a right to myself.”That kind of professional political agnosticism, perhaps partly a function of her home base in the heartland and her start as a country artist, might seem like a cop-out in today’s political climate. But it’s also true that much of the country, like Parton, doesn’t talk about politics every day.She brought an earnest smile and an infectious giggle into any conversation. Her music was more focused on the sad songs, love ballads and duets that sold in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Today it’s breakup albums that get plays and attention.“Jolene,” sung from the perspective of an unnamed narrator whose man would leave her for the more beautiful Jolene if he could, comes across as a plea and a lament. If a similar theme were addressed today by another country/pop crossover artist, it might come off more like a beef track.Parton came from a time when division wasn’t necessary to build an audience. And she built the widest audience possible.“Dolly was raised in her grandfather’s church. She knew the Bible. And one of her favorite verses was judge not, lest you be judged,” her biographer Martha Ackmann told NPR in 2025.Parton lived by that principle, Ackmann said. The big hair and makeup might have created a persona upon which others placed their own expectations. But beneath it all, Ackmann said, Parton was best described by the word “decency” — “that hardcore decency that respects other people and treats others with compassion and openness.”This story has been updated with additional details.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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