Nationwide — Shantel Patrice Ennis, a 29-year-old African American mom of seven youngsters from Jacksonville, Florida, was sadly killed in a automotive crash close to the Acosta Bridge this previous weekend. Her fiancé and their one-year-old baby have been significantly injured however survived.The Florida Freeway Patrol mentioned Ennis’s fiancé, Michael Fulmore, was driving when their car hit a barrier on Riverside Avenue simply earlier than midday. Paramedics rushed Fulmore and the infant to the hospital. Ennis was pronounced useless on the scene.
Fulmore mentioned he was knocked unconscious within the crash and woke as much as discover Ennis unresponsive. “I’m tapping her, attempting to wake her up,” he advised 11 Alive. “I dread the truth that the children will not be going to have their mother, and I misplaced my fiancé. I’ve cried each tear I can cry.”
Ennis’s loss of life has left her household devastated. Her father, Pastor Jerome Gross sales, and his spouse raised her after her organic father died. “From day one, she gave me the affectionate time period of pop,” he mentioned. He fondly recalled educating her to drive and being current for main life milestones, together with the beginning of her first baby.
Gross sales, who had simply led a church service earlier that day, recalled getting the devastating information hours later. “To get up with a reward in your coronary heart and go to church considering all the pieces’s going to be effective, after which to get out of church and all the pieces is turned the wrong way up, it’s simply phenomenal,” he mentioned.
The household is now leaning on their religion to get by means of this troublesome time. Pastor Gross sales had preached concerning the “hidden energy in your storm” that very morning, a message he says now feels extra actual than ever.
Ennis’s dad and mom are targeted on maintaining her seven youngsters collectively and honoring her reminiscence by preserving the household she constructed. The neighborhood has already provided help with donations. A GoFundMe web page has been set as much as assist the household, and it has thus far raised over $4,000.
