A Missouri teen was killed over the weekend when she fell off the SUV she was dancing on top of and was struck by a fire truck responding to an emergency call, police said.
Nyla Simmons, 18, was coming home from a friend’s prom send-off party Saturday night when she started to dance on the roof of a Cadillac Escalade as it drove through the streets of St. Louis, sources told KMOV.
The Escalade had stopped at a red light, and Simmons fell off when the vehicle turned left. Seconds later, she was run over and killed by a fire truck responding to a call, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department said.
The truck had its siren and lights on, the department added.
“We aren’t ever going to be the same after this … I’m still in shock right now,” her parents, Everett and Letrice Simmons, told KMOV.
“We just wanted the best for Nyla, the incident is just tragic the way she died but that’s what hurts the most, the way she died. Nyla was out having fun, that’s what she liked: having fun, hanging out with her friends,” Letrice said.
She had been riding in a car full of her teen friends.
“We’ve all been young before, we all have done some type of thing where it could have ended up bad for us,” her distraught father told the station.
“Don’t get on top of a car, ya’ll, just don’t get on top, just be safe,” her mother warned.
Simmons was the youngest of five children. She had attended Parkway North High School and graduated from Fern Ridge High School last year. She was slated to start cosmetology school two days after she died, family members told KMOV.
The Parkway step team Simmons danced on called her a “force of talent” and a “light that shined brightly both on and off the stage,” Fox2 Now reported.
“Nyla was going to be an entrepreneur, Nyla was going to be great in this world, and it’s tragic that she’s not here,” her father told the station.