A 64-year-old Norriton Township woman died while driving to her job at Genuardi’s in the early morning hours of Sunday’s Hurricane Irene.
Patricia O’Neill is the fifth person in Pennsylvania whose death is being blamed on Hurricane Irene.
O’Neill’s body was discovered at about 5 p.m. Sunday in the Wissahickon Creek in Montgomery County, around a half mile from where her car was found in the flooded waterway, police say.
Whitemarsh Township police said rescuers started searching for O'Neill after her family reported that she didn't make it to her job at the Flourtown Shopping Center.
Police and emergency responders discovered her car in the creek on Sunday afternoon.
The storm is also being blamed in the deaths of three other people who were killed by falling trees and one man killed in a crash on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, but O’Neill is the first reported Irene death in the Philadelphia area.
A New Jersey woman was also found dead when her car was brought down by a flooded street in Salem County.
Celena Sylvestri called her boyfriend and 911 at about 1:40 a.m. Sunday but she was later found strapped into her flooded car.
