Daughter remembers mother killed in head-on crash in Cleveland County

CLEVELAND COUNTY, N.C. — A family is grieving after 55-year-old Tammy King Conley was killed in a head-on crash while heading to Cherokee for a vacation with her parents. Troopers said a 19-year-old driver crossed the center line on Clineland Road in Cleveland County, causing the crash that also seriously injured Conley’s parents.

Conley’s daughter, Victoria Davis, talked to her mom before the crash. She said her mother was excited.

“I have her ring that she always wore,” Davis said.

Davis keeps her mother’s ring on a chain around her neck, and she holds fast to the memory of her mother’s last words the morning of April 13.

“I had told her, ‘Mom, I love you, and I hope you have a good trip, and let me know you made it there.’ And she never made it,” Davis said.

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Dakota Shirey’s truck crossed the double yellow line on Clineland Road and crashed into the car head-on, troopers said.

The truck came to a rest on top of the car.

Conley was in the back seat of the car. She died on impact.

“It’s like one of those nightmares. You just want to wake up from him and it not be true,” Davis said.

Davis’ grandfather, Keith Hacker, went to a hospital in an ambulance, and he was flown to Atrium CMC in Charlotte.

His wife, Joyce Hacker, was airlifted from the scene with a severe head injury.

Joyce Hacker’s family got their first chance to talk to her in recovery on Tuesday. They told her that her oldest daughter had died.

“She was just, ‘Oh, my baby. Not my baby,’” Davis said.

Conley was a cancer survivor who said her daughters and grandchildren helped her survive that ordeal. But then she died in a car crash.

“It’s hard not to feel some anger and everything,” Davis said.

Shirey is facing a misdemeanor charge of death by motor vehicle. He was able to leave the deadly scene with his loved ones.

“They get to see him,” Davis said. “That’s something me, and my sister, and our family will never have again. We don’t get to talk to our mother.”

Last week, a family in Caldwell County lost a 78-year-old man and his 11-year-old grandson in a similar crash.

Davis said she reached out to that family to try to comfort them.

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