Louisville woman finds new meaning in final gift from friend killed in UPS plane crash

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Eight days ago, Melissa Winters was waiting for one of her best friends to come over to her apartment.

But instead of hearing a knock at the door, she turned on the news and saw her friend's workplace and car going up in flames.

Winters knew three of the women killed at Grade A Auto Parts when a UPS cargo plane crashed into the building last Tuesday. But she was especially close to one of them — Ella Whorton.

“We’d gotten really close here lately,” Winters said. “She gave me her favorite ring — a really pretty silver ring — about a week before it happened. I told her I didn’t want to take her favorite one, but she said, ‘No, I want you to have it.’ And I’m glad she did now.”

The afternoon of Nov. 4, Winters left Grade A Auto Parts around 2:30 p.m. She and her husband sold scrap metal there every day. That night, she and Whorton had made plans to hang out.

“I saw her six days a week,” Winters said. “She was actually going to come over that night, but her boyfriend had stayed home with a migraine. She told me, ‘I have to go check on him, and then I’ll come back and see you.’ I said, ‘All right.’”

The office at Grade A typically closed at 5 p.m. each weekday. Winters said she tried to call Whorton before realizing what was happening.

“I tried calling her before I realized that’s where it was,” Winters said. “I was like, she’s still coming over — but she didn’t answer.”

Just as the office was being locked up for the day, UPS Flight 2976 crashed into the building.

“I was laying down, and my husband hollered for me,” Winters said. “He was like, ‘Baby, get in here.’ And I went in there, and he said, ‘Look!’ It was on the TV. He said, ‘Everybody we know is dead.’”

At first, Winters refused to believe it.

“That’s all he kept saying — ‘Everybody we know is dead,’” she said. “And I said, ‘No, it’s not. They could’ve heard it and ran.’ But he said, ‘You know how fast that was going.’”

She began calling and texting Whorton’s phone — but there was no answer.

“Her phone was in the Jeep because she was cashing out, or she dropped it running,” Winters said.

She knew nearly everyone who worked in the Grade A office — many of them mothers.

“Ella had three daughters. Trina (Chavez) had two kids — a boy and a girl. And Megan (Washburn) had a son and a daughter,” she said.

Now, Winters wears the ring Whorton gave her as a reminder of their friendship — and of the life and joy her friend brought to everyone around her.

“She was always so happy to see me,” she said. “If everyone was as happy to see me as she was, there’d be no bad in anything.”

For Winters, that silver ring has become something more — a memorial to a friend.