Ten years after the rock-throwing incident on I-80 in Pennsylvania, the victims are still plagued by their problems.

The life of an Ohio family changed forever one evening in late July ten years ago.

Randy Budd, his wife Sharon and daughter Kaylee were driving east on Interstate 80 in Union County toward Somerset, New Jersey, looking forward to seeing “Mama Mia” on Broadway.

Kaylee was driving and her mother was sitting next to her in the passenger seat when, just before midnight on July 10, 2014, a 4.5-pound rock thrown from an overpass about two miles west of Route 15 smashed through the window.

Sharon Budd, a teacher from Uniontown, Ohio, received a direct punch in the face.

She was taken to Geisinger Medical Center near Danville, where surgeons had to remove part of her skull to allow her brain to swell. The breast cancer survivor lost sight in her right eye.

Sharon survived, but her husband committed suicide in August 2016.

Today, she lives in a nursing facility in Canton, Ohio. In addition to walking and eating out, she enjoys reading and watching reruns of “Seinfeld” and “Chicago Fire,” says her sister-in-law, Rhonda Williams. She also enjoys telling stories.

Williams says an infection around her right eye socket last year required surgery to remove the hardware used to rebuild that side of her face. Doctors in Ohio opted not to replace the hardware, so the right side of her face droops in the area of ​​the eye.

Sharon is still angry at the four boys who were charged with stone throwing, Williams says.

Kaylee graduated from the University of Akron and works for a flooring company in Columbus, Ohio, where she lives with her partner.

Sharon’s three sons – Lucas, James and Joey – all live in Ohio. Lucas, the eldest, was scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan when the incident occurred, but the Army granted him emergency leave.

Today, he takes care of everything for his mother, Williams says. He and his wife are expecting their first child and James and his wife are expecting their second, she says. Joey is single.

The family remains in touch with people in Pennsylvania who befriended the family and helped them during the tragedy.

“Randy was overwhelmed with gratitude,” says Williams. “He wanted to reach out to everyone and thank them. We think of them all the time. We could never have done it without these people.”

She specifically mentioned Jeff Farrow and Ron Frost, who provided the family with free accommodation in a small house while Sharon was at Geisinger.

Because the rock throwing event attracted national attention, Sharon received cards from all over, Williams says. Several fundraisers were held in central Pennsylvania, including two motorcycle rides.

Charged with the rock throwing incident that struck Sharon Budd were brothers Brett and Dylan Lahr, Keefer McGee and Tyler G. Porter, all of the New Columbia area. Brett Lahr was 18 and the other three were 17 when the rock was thrown.

They pleaded guilty or denied charges, including aggravated assault and conspiracy to commit aggravated assault, and served prison sentences.

The late Union County District Attorney D. Peter Johnson identified Dylan Lahr as the rock thrower. He was sentenced to 4½ to 24 years in prison in 2015.

He and his brother, who was sentenced to 18 months to 20 years in prison, were paroled, as was Porter. McGee, who cooperated with prosecutors, was sentenced to serve time in the county jail.

The district attorney once described Lahrs, Porter and McGee as “terrorists operating under the cover of night.”

He claimed that they had formed a group with the initials FSU whose aim was to commit vandalism. The group’s full name contained swear words.

Other acts of vandalism attributed to them include driving through a cornfield, smashing the windows of a house with a baseball bat, and throwing rocks at a semi-trailer on I-80.

Kaylee was on her way to give her father, who was sitting in the back seat, a break that fateful night in 2014. They were unharmed.

Randy Budd told PennLive in 2014 that he told his daughter to pull over when he saw the hole the rock had left in the windshield.

When the lights came on in the car, he said, he could see his wife’s skull and there was blood everywhere.

Sharon Budd spent three months at Geisinger Hospital, undergoing five surgeries and then spending time in rehabilitation. Williams spent almost every day with her.

In November 2014, she returned to Geisinger for a sixth surgery when moisture was discovered in the area where a plastic cap had been placed to protect the brain where part of the skull had been removed.

Her seventh surgery at Geisinger took place in June 2015, when she had a medical plastic cap implanted to replace the part of her skull that had been removed after the accident.

This operation made it no longer necessary to wear a protective helmet.

She also underwent five hours of facial reconstruction surgery on her nose and the eye where she had lost vision.

Budd returned home but could not be left alone, so her husband Kaylee and Joey took on this responsibility.

Randy Budd died two and a half hours after sending a text message to Republican Senator Gene Yaw of Lycoming with an urgent plea: “Please make sure the fence problem is solved.”

Yaw had introduced a bill that would require the construction of fences for new or major renovations.

When Johnson learned of Budd’s death, he said, “Randy Budd didn’t die from a gunshot. He died when those kids threw a rock through his windshield.”