Danville Native Killed In Washington DC: Reports

DANVILLE, CA — A Danville native who worked as a State Department diplomat was killed Wednesday morning in Washington, D.C., DanvilleSanRamon.com and The Washington Post reported.

Shawn O’Donnell, 40, was struck and killed by a truck while riding her bike in northwestern Washington, D.C., the city’s Metropolitan Police confirmed to The Washington Post. Police said in a statement Thursday that O’Donnell was traveling alongside the truck, but was crushed when it attempted to make a right turn and did not see her. She was taken to the hospital with critical injuries, and pronounced dead that morning.

Police said the incident remains under investigation, and it is unknown if the driver, who stopped and cooperated with the investigation, will face charges.

"Thirty minutes after the truck hit her, and she was dead -- a girl who I carried under my heart for nine months, and I carried in my heart for 40 years, and now that part of my heart will never be fixed," mother Mary O’Donnell told DanvilleSanRamon.com. "It's just gone."

O’Donnell said her daughter was “a woman of service, always thinking of others.” Born and raised in Danville, she graduated from U.C. Berkeley, where she rowed crew, according to profiles in The Post and Danville/San Ramon. She earned a Masters of Public Policy from the University of Minnesota, according to the paper. She worked at Google for two years, then moved to Washington, where she worked at the Department of Homeland Security, where she helped refugees seeking asylum; U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and finally as a foreign service officer at the State Department.

For her 40th birthday, she climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro.

“The world lost out on Shawn because she was a bright light who had so much more to give and so much more to live,” her mother told The Post.