20-year-old FSU sophomore Ellie Sims was killed in a car accident in late April. Now, people that knew her want to keep what happened to her from happening to anyone else.
Kristen Sims, Ellie’s mother, said, she and her husband are travelling from Tennessee to ask the Tallahassee City Commission Wednesday to add more pedestrian safety measures to the area around the Pensacola and Lorene Street intersection, the intersection her daughter was killed.
“There’s a hole now in our family that will never, ever be filled. I mean, we’ll never be the same without her, and as a mother, and I’m just, I’m truly devastated and we will never be the same,” she said.
She isn’t going to be the only one speaking at the meeting. Stacey Butler, a Tallahassee resident and mother of a friend of Ellie’s, has helped organize a group of people to go to speak during the public comment period. They are going to be wearing and passing out teal ribbons, Ellie’s favorite color.
An FSU student in the 90’s, Butler said local officials need to do more to protect students with the increased development around campus.
“College town wasn’t even there at that time. So that whole the student population in the college town area has just exploded, and so I just feel that the city and FSU need to do a better job at keeping up with the infrastructure of the city and the safety for the pedestrians that you know must cross St. Augustine and Pensacola just to get to class,” she said.
Sims says the city has already been in contact with her and her husband about potential changes, but none have been put in yet. She hopes the changes can keep what happened to Ellie from happening to anyone else.
“Ellie was the kind of person who she would have wanted her death to be to lead to we want something good to come out of this,” she said.
The meeting takes place Wednesday at 3 p.m, but public comment usually doesn’t begin until five.
