CHESTER -- A 58-year-old woman died Tuesday when a lawn mower flipped and landed on her, officials said.
Carol Ivey Prince of 723 Old Pump Station Road in Union died from head and neck injuries, said Tommy Williams, Chester County chief deputy coroner.
"She was actually cutting a yard," Williams said. "It looked like the lawn mower turned over on top of her. It was just a freak accident."
No autopsy is planned, Williams said.
Carol Prince and her husband, William "Bill" Prince, operated a 27-year-old grass-cutting business. But maintaining lawns was not a job for Carol Prince. It was her passion, William Prince said.
"She manicured her lawns," an emotional William Prince said when reached Tuesday evening at home. "She'd stand back with her hands on her hips and look at it (the lawns) with a great, big grin on her face. When she did that, I knew the job was finished to her satisfaction."
The mother of two, grandmother of five and animal lover last talked to her husband Tuesday morning before their schedules sent them separate ways, William Prince said.
"I went out with her every day but today," Prince said. "I was going to meet her at our next job."
Around 2:45 p.m., Carol Prince was cutting grass atop a Great Dane lawn mower at a house on S.C. 49, about 20 miles from Chester and half a mile from the York County line, Williams said.
"It looked like the lawn mower was going up an incline," Williams said. "The lawn mower just flipped."
Prince added, "She had just begun when it took place. The front had not been done, nor the sides or back."
Prince finds comfort in knowing his wife died doing what she loved.
"This was a pleasure for her," Prince said about Carol Prince cutting lawns. "It's a terrible loss for me."
William Prince has no plans to close his business.
"I'm probably going to keep going," he said. "She'd want me to keep going."
