In the early morning of November 3, 2021, Ben Chronister woke up, as usual, enmeshed in his life with his wife Danielle.
They made inside jokes. They ate leftovers. They discussed plans and projects to come—namely, Danielle’s plan to segue from teaching at MC2 Stem High School downtown to the world of forensic science, for which she’d studied for years. The couple had relocated Downtown from Cleveland Heights for both a sense of convenience and progress.
“She had, like, 85 million browser tabs open in her browser,” Ben recalled on Thursday. “She always had a bunch of things going on.”
A half an hour later, around 8 a.m., Danielle was clipped by a Mack dump truck as she was crossing East 21st and Chester Avenue on her bike. Her body hit the truck’s sideview mirror as it was turning right. She fell under its tires. She died almost instantly.
On Thursday, two-and-a-half years after Danielle’s death at the age of 33, friends and family of hers joined City Hall officials and traffic safety advocates on the corner just feet away where she was struck that November. Flanked by Danielle’s portrait, those present spoke in the former CMSD teacher’s honor and to commemorate a “Watch For Pedestrians” sign to be installed to ideally prevent any further deaths.