Montclair woman killed on Va. 234

Jeanna Elizabeth Stewardson was given more to drink than a woman her size should have the night she stumbled onto Va. 234, family members said.

And her brother and fiancé both wonder how a bartender could let someone in that condition wander out on her own.

But she did on Thursday night.

At about 11 p.m., two cars traveling south near Waterway Drive struck the 21-year-old Prince William County native. She died at the scene, police said.

"I don't understand how and why a bar would be able to serve someone like that," Steward-son's fiancé, 23-year-old Clinton Pennington, said Friday outside the couple's apartment building on the 3100 block of Chesapeake Drive near Dumfries.

Her brother, Robert Stewardson, and Pennington said they want the drivers to know the family doesn't fault them for what happened.

After all, they said, it was dark and rainy and Stewardson was wearing dark clothes and wasn't crossing at a crosswalk.

The two said they called 911 around 10 p.m. after getting an incoherent call from Stewardson, but police said they could not find a record of that call.

Police said there is record of a call roughly 15 minutes before Stewardson was hit from an unknown person who reported a disorderly/drunk in public at a shopping center on Waterway Drive in Montclair.

Pennington said he and Stewardson had been together for five years and had twin girls in 2004.

Then two months ago, despite not being able to get her a ring, Pennington proposed and she said yes.

"She was great. She was an excellent mother," he said.

"Her life was devoted to her kids," her brother later added. "She was the epitome of a care-giver."

A couple of hours later Stewardson's mother, Mary Stewardson, walked through the door of her daugh-ter's apartment carrying a boxful of pictures.

They were of Stewardson from years ago when she was still in middle school. And then there were others of her smiling with her two daughters.

Mary Stewardson, 42, said her daughter had bee

extremely stressed lately, both with her finances and health.

Through all her own troubles, though, family said Stewardson always looked out for others.

"I was always so proud of her," Stewardson's mother said, beginning to cry. "I always called her my perfect angel."

Neither of the drivers was speeding and alcohol was not a factor, said Officer Erika Hernandez police spokeswoman.

Staff writer Elisa Glushefski can be reached at 703-878-8062.