A Missouri teen was killed over the weekend after she fell off the roof of the SUV she was dancing on and was hit by a passing firetruck, according to police.
Nyla Simmons, 18, was coming home from a friend's prom send-off party on 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 took a light turn. Seconds later, she was struck and killed by a fire truck responding to a local emergency 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," Nyla's parents, Everett and Letrice Simmons, told the local news outlet.
"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. Nyla 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 father told the TV 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.
"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.
