CRASH KILLS TEEN IN FRONT OF HOME
Mom can’t save daughter’s life
A heartbroken mother desperately tried to save her dying 19-year-old daughter as the teen lay in the street just steps from her home after a freak car accident Sunday night in Milford, witnesses said.
Jacqueline Gray was killed when the driver of a packed Ford SUV lost control of the vehicle — apparently due to a mechanical failure of some kind — and slammed into a telephone pole before striking a parked van, police said.
“I heard the car hit the pole and watched it hit the van, I ran up to the car and everyone was out of the car, they were screaming her name,” said Joe Blodgett, a next-door neighbor and family friend. “I turned around and saw her in the road.”
Blodgett said he held the teen’s neck while her mother, who works as a nurse at Brookside Elementary School in Milford, frantically performed CPR.
The six kids in the car at the time of the crash — one of whom is Gray’s younger brother — were enjoying the holiday weekend and had just come from a local ice cream shop where Gray worked, Blodgett said.
“They were coming home to watch the fireworks with us,” Blodgett said. “Man, it’s tough. I thought she was going to make it.”
The driver told police there was smoke inside the car and she lost control as it started to accelerate, Milford police Chief Tom O’Loughlin said. The driver, an 18-year-old from Milford, told the five passengers to jump out, prompting at least two of them to leap from the moving SUV, O’Loughlin said.
Police are working on reconstructing the accident and are not certain whether Gray, seated in the rear passenger seat, jumped from the car or was ejected, the chief added.
Joan Camelli said she heard the SUV hit her van and said “nobody wants to know” the horrific scene she saw when she came out of her house.
“The mother was trying to give her CPR, trying to help her,” Camelli said. “She is a very nice lady, very close to her daughter, it’s going to be a horrible loss.”
Gray was airlifted to UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester where she later succumbed to her injuries, O’Loughlin said. The other passengers were treated and released from Milford Regional Medical Center.
Gray had just finished her freshman year at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut after graduating from Milford High School last year. She spent nine years dancing with Express Dance and Acrobatics in Milford, and was scheduled to work at the dance studio this summer.
“She was just an incredible young lady who had this beautiful passion for life and for dance and wanted to share that happiness with her team members,” said Omar Merced, 40, of Franklin, one of the instructors at the studio. “She became part of our family.”
One of Gray’s friends, Emily Wood, 18, fought back tears as she described Gray as “really inspiring.”
“I think she always motivated us to do our best and she loved to dance,” she said.
A vigil will be held tonight at Milford High School, Superintendent of Schools Kevin McIntyre said, and grief counseling will be provided for current and former students as well as faculty.