James Bausch was at a jeweler’s picking up an engagement ring for his girlfriend, Amanda “Mandy” Annis, the last time he spoke to her.
As he rode his bicycle to her home Wednesday, he thought nothing of the police swarmed at the intersection of Kedzie and Armitage Avenues. Searching for Annis later, he learned of the accident from an investigator there.
Annis, a 5th-grade teacher at a West Side school, was killed about 3 p.m. when her bicycle collided with a car. Police said a preliminary investigation indicates that the driver might have run a red light.
“[Police] said she had been struck and killed instantly,” Bausch, 27, said. “Over the next couple minutes, I had to have them tell me several times” to believe it.
Bausch had planned to whisk her away to Pennsylvania this weekend to see her parents for the first time since they had moved back from Romania, he said. He was going to ask her father for her hand in marriage and then propose.
Annis, 24, spent most of her adolescence in Romania, where her family worked as Christian missionaries, said her father, John Annis, 52. Even though she lived far from her two younger sisters, Mandy was always there for them, her mother, Lynn Annis, wrote in an e-mail.
Cordell Curtis, 23, of the 9200 block of South Justine Street, the driver, was cited Thursday for failure to reduce speed, reckless driving and having no insurance, said Chicago Police Officer Laura Kubiak.
Annis was the best big sister she could ask for, said her youngest sister, Amelia. “She’s going to be remembered always,” Amelia Annis wrote in a Facebook message. “She’ll be the subject of many stories, and my kids will know about her. I loved her so much, and she knew that because those were the last words we said to each other.”
