Tampa Newspaper: more intimate look at to what happened the day of the crash
I'm not sure if this has been posted. My apologies if it has. Mods can delete if they wished.
Wesley Chapel Model Killed In N.J. Wreck
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full story.
By KEVIN WIATROWSKI The Tampa Tribune
WESLEY CHAPEL - The past year took Heather
Bratton from Wesley Chapel High School to the cover of Italian Vogue magazine.
Bratton's future as a model ended suddenly July 22 when she died in a fiery car crash on the New Jersey Turnpike. She turned 19 less than a month earlier.
New Jersey State Police reported that they had confirmed Bratton's identity Sunday. Bratton was killed when the car she was traveling in broke down in the turnpike's middle lane. A sport utility vehicle rear-ended the stalled car and caused it to collide with another car.
Bratton was trapped inside as her car and the SUV caught fire, according to published reports.
Bratton's modeling agency said in a statement that she was on her way to Newark Liberty International Airport at the time of the wreck.
Three other people, including the driver of Bratton's car, were injured in the wreck.
The day of the crash, Bratton's mother, Wendy Kerrigan, had spent hours waiting for her daughter to arrive at Tampa International Airport, a neighbor, Nancy Jean-Baptiste, said Sunday.
Pasco County sheriff's deputies came to the Kerrigan home on Key West Court in the Northwood neighborhood later that day to deliver the bad news, Jean-Baptiste said.
Bratton was the oldest of five siblings in her blended family. She was known as "Sissy" because she had a younger sister also named Heather, neighbors said.
"There aren't that many 19-year-olds that are that squared away," said Paul Walker, a neighbor on Key West Court.
Bratton's death was the second blow in a week to the Northwood neighborhood. Bratton's family lives 14 houses away from the family of Raymond Veluz, who was found dead Friday morning with another Wesley Chapel teen on a dirt road in northeast Pasco.
Like many people her age, Bratton had a Web page on Myspace.com. On her page, Bratton listed models Kate Moss and Gisele Bundchen as people she hoped to meet one day.
By Sunday afternoon, friends had posted their condolences there and at
www.heatherbratton .com.
"i was crying last night because i miss you," wrote a poster calling herself Coco [but not Chanel]. "i keep looking at our picture together. this isnt fair i need my heather."
Bratton lived at home in Wesley Chapel but also shared an apartment with friends in New York, neighbors said.
"She spent her last year traveling the world," Jean-Baptiste said.
Those travels had taken her to modeling shows in Milan and Paris.
On Sunday, Bratton's mother and stepfather were arranging for their daughter's burial in South Carolina.
http://www.tbo.com/news/metro/MGBKDOR4AQE.html

oh wow! poor Heather's mother. I cannot imagine what she went through that day waiting for her daughter's arrival that was not to be.