‘SHE WAS ON HER WAY TO MEET BABY BRO’
‘Really one-of-a-kind’
SHANIA McNeill was planning a trip to the Gold Coast next week to coincide with the birth of her baby brother. But she will never get to meet him. The 21-year-old died in Sydney early on Sunday morning when the car she was driving veered into oncoming traffic. A Snapchat clip filmed by a friend in the car (inset) captured Ms McNeill’s final moments. “She was excited to meet her little brother,” a friend of the former Gold Coast woman said yesterday. "She said she couldn’t wait and that it was going to be a fun trip here.”
THE young woman killed in a horrific crash in Sydney was excitedly planning a trip to the Gold Coast to meet her baby brother, due to be born any day now.
Friends of former Gold Coast woman Shania McNeill, 21, said they had made plans to catch up with the “one-of-a-kind”, “fun-loving” girl when she was here in the next week, before she died in the early hours of Sunday.
A GoFundMe page has also been set up by Ms McNeill’s aunt to help the family with funeral costs, raising more than $12,000 in just more a day.
Shania’s mum Tennille is due to give birth to a baby boy. Shania’s other siblings are Angel, Jemma and Jack.
They all live in Queensland and the GoFundMe page said the money raised would also help the family travel to Sydney for the funeral.
Long-time friend Tarnia McGuire met Shania in Year 7 at Richmond High in NSW before the pair reconnected again a few years later when they both moved to the Coast.
“After Year 9 I left there and funnily enough we ended up in the same spot in Queensland and we connected again,” Ms McGuire said.
“We were both in a really rough patch in our life and we helped each other through it. We were two little lost teenage souls doing our thing and having fun.”
Ms McGuire described Shania as a fun-loving girl who would have done anything for her friends.
“Without trying to sound clichéd about my own friend, she really was one-of-a-kind. She was connected to absolutely everyone,” Ms McGuire said.
“She was outgoing, lived life in the moment, to the fullest … she would drop everything to help anyone.
“We were very close, we picked up exactly where we had left off.
“We were going to catch up when she came up to meet her little baby brother this week.
“She was excited to meet her little brother, she said that she couldn’t wait and that it was going to be a fun trip here.”
More recently, Ms McGuire said her good friend had shocked a few people when she started a job at a chicken farm.
“When we were kids, she was kind of misunderstood. She was kind of emo, gothic and expressed herself in that way, big hair, big make-up, big eyes, and then one day she got a job in a chicken farm.
“It shocked a lot of people, but it was her. She genuinely loved that job and the chickens … she saw the littlest things in life and made them big.
“It was weird and odd, but she had a love for it and that’s how I’ll remember her.” To help Ms McNeill’s family with funeral costs visit https://www.gofundme.com/mcneill-family-shanias-funeral