Pea Ridge graduate and Joplin resident Lexi Paryzek was driving home from Kansas when one of the worst tornadoes in U.S. history destroyed a third of the southwest Missouri town.

Paryzek, 19, is a student at Missouri Southern State University in Joplin. She lives in an apartment with three friends, spends time with her boyfriend and has - had - a good car to drive.

“My car looked like a grenade was thrown into it, all the windows were busted,” she said Monday. She and her boyfriend, Collin New, had left her car at his duplex Sunday.

“We came back around 7 p.m. We didn’t understand fully until we saw it,” she said. “The traffic was backed up about four miles back from Joplin.”

Paryzek and New were on their way home when they received word of the tornado.

They were forced to park and walk seven blocks to the duplex where they found Paryzek’s car outside but the building: “You couldn’t even recognize it, we had to search for which one was his cause it was so destroyed,” she said.

“I heard a guy screaming for his mom, he had just found her dead. He was screaming ‘No, mom, no.’ Everyone was confused, everyone was talking and didn’t know what to do, dogs were running everywhere,” she said.

“There were a bunch of trees uprooted. The Walmart was gone. Academy Sports was gone. Gone, as in flattened. RangelineRoad was pretty much smashed.”

“I don’t even know how to describe it, there was just nothing. Everything was flattened as far as you could see. Every house around was just gone,” New said. “As soon as we got into town, we could smell fire and see smoke from what we heard was the hospital. We could smell gas leaking.”

They plan to go through the rubble to see what can be salvaged.

Luckily, Paryzek’s apartment was left standing with little damage, but no electricity. She said she was told it will be a week or more before power is returned to the building.

News, Pages 1 on 05/25/2011