Storm stories: Tales from Monday's Hampton Roads tornado

Residents' stories from Monday's tornado in Suffolk:

Dorothy Jones, Driver

When Dorothy Jones saw on the news that a storm could be coming her way, she huddled up in a lift chair in the den of her home .

The 78-year-old widow grabbed a bed pillow and two big throw pillows, she said, and surrounded her upper body with them.

“I’ve never heard a sound like that,” she said. “It was worse than a freight train, I think.”

She was so scared she didn’t know what to do. A diabetic, she thought she might have a heart attack.

“I prayed as hard as I’ve ever prayed,” she said, “because I thought my time had come.”

Since the storm, Jones has talked to friends and family. She went outside and saw pieces of her shed all over.

Police have dropped by to check on Jones, who has arthritis.

Other neighbors experienced worse damage.

“Everything is tore up in Driver,” she said. “It’s a mess here.”

Jones has lived in her brick home on Kings Highway for more than 30 years.

“I’ve never lived through nothing like this,” she said.

Danny Shea, Suffolk

Danny Shea’s brother, a firefighter, called their mother’s house with a warning – there might be a tornado coming. Shea said he ran outside, and took 15 seconds of video on his cell phone.

Then he ran inside, pulled a mattress off a bed and jumped into a bathtub with his mother and pullde the mattress over their heads.

“I said, 'Mom, this could be it.’”

Latasha Grooms, Suffolk

Latasha, a teenager, said she was home alone with her 10-year-old sister on Mallard Street in the Burnettes Mill subdivision.

She was watching the news and they were giving instructions on what to do. Their mother was out of town. As soon as she saw the news, told her sister to get in closet and put pillows and blankets around her. What she heard was just like everybody always says: It’s just like a freight train. By 4:17 it was over. She couldn’t believe how fast it happened.

Jeanie Pippin and Dr. Erica Peoletier, Suffolk

They were working at Suffolk Pediatrics, near Sentara Obici Hospital. Having heard about the weather warning, they said, the staff was on the lookout. There were about two dozen people, including 10 children, in the building.

Suddenly, the lights went out. Then somebody saw a car fly past the window.

“We just huddled together and cuddled the babies” in an interior room, said Pippin.

No one was hurt inside the building, Peoletier said, “but we heard people calling for help outside.” They found one injured person in the parking lot, and helped pull another out of a car.

As they worked, they could hear the hissing sound of a gas leak.

Bob Lester, Suffolk

He said he was in his car on a bridge on Wilroy Road when he saw the storm.

“The funnel cloud literally took up the left side of my windshield.”

He called his father, Jim, to warn him – and Jim Lester, Bob’s 12-year-old son and their beagle hunkered down in a closet. Bob Lester said he got out his car and watched the storm as it passed.

The family once lived in Oklahoma – in Tornado Alley – so they know these storms.

“I’m guessing it was (an F-2 or F-3), easily,” he said. “Massive.”

Nichole Hamilton, Suffolk

Nichole Hamilton, her daughter and mother were inside her house in Snead Drive in the Hillpoint Farms subdivision , she said.

After hearing a whooshing sound, she said, she looked out her back window and saw a funnel cloud “coming right toward my house” across the golf course.

She screamed for her mother, Elke Vazquez, to take her daughter, Tatiana, 6, into a hallway coat closet.

“I ran to my back sliding door and it was literally in my back yard,” she said in a telephone interview. She got inside the closet with her mother and daughter but couldn’t close the door all the way.

“The pressure was so tremendous and the wind was blowing,” she said. “I heard all the glass, the windows busting out. I heard things falling and crashing.”

When the noise subsided she opened the closet door and could see through the holes in her roof. Items had impaled ceilings and walls. A neighbor across the street had blood covering his face; his house was destroyed.

“My house is crooked, what’s left of it,” Hamilton said.

She and other neighbors were stuck outside the golf course clubhouse as of 9 p.m. Her car was destroyed and she couldn’t leave, she said. Her husband was stuck in traffic on U.S. 58 and couldn’t get to her.

Earlier, she had told him their house was destroyed.

Antonio Respass, Norfolk

Respass was on his way to see his mother, who lives in Schooner Cove, off Bennett’s Creek Road in Driver. He arrived in downtown just as the storm did.

“I saw the funnel cloud,” he said. “The sky got black and then it hit. It pushed the window out of my car. Stuff was flying. I just kept my head down.”

Respass said his car was sliding on the road, pushed by the wind. A tree went past.

“I could see trees in the air,” he said. “It touched down here on this side, and then moved across the road.”

His car, driver’s side window broken out, was parked near the Harmony House antique shop. Through the open front door, the view was of a neighbor’s house instead of the store interior, because the walls and roof were gone. Furniture was strewn across the side yard, and dangled from the second floor.

“I don’t know how it missed me,” Respass said.

“By the grace of God,” replied Bob McDonald, who lives just down the road. “By the grace of God.”

— Dave Forster, Linda McNatt, Mike Saewitz, Diane Tennant and Patrick Wilson