Update: Family and pals will acquire to celebrate the daily life of Ashley Marie Armstrong from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday April 3 at Pine Forest park, 3929 Grant Street. There will be a balloon launch in her memory, and attendees are requested to have on some variation of pink or pink in her honor, Linda Armstrong explained Thursday.
Ashley Marie Armstrong’s daughter will switch 7 upcoming thirty day period, but the 28-year-previous Jacksonville mother won’t be there to celebrate with her.
Spouse and children and close friends are mourning her dying Monday when she was struck by a sport-utility motor vehicle even though standing beside her disabled car on Interstate 295 at City Centre Parkway.
The telephone suddenly lower off as Linda Armstrong experimented with to console her distraught daughter who was in tears for the reason that her sedan clipped a guard rail as she drove dwelling from perform.
“She was crying and stored indicating, ‘My vehicle, my car or truck, What am I going to do. I want my car. How will I get to operate?’ I stored telling her, ‘Calm down, relaxed down, it’s just a vehicle.’ Then the next moment the cellphone went beep, beep and went useless,” Armstrong reported Wednesday as she recalled the last words spoken with her only daughter.
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“I saved contacting and contacting and contacting, imagining she was likely to decide on up. … I went and drove the route to come across her but failed to see anything at all. I arrived household and the condition trooper was there. He did not have to say a phrase, I knew it was terrible, serious terrible,” she reported with tears in her voice.
She’s established a GoFundMe online fundraiser to help with funeral expenses and help her granddaughter, who was the pride and pleasure of her mom.
Solitary mom of one daughter
Ashley Armstrong was en route house from Mascaras Gentlemen’s Club when the crash took place about 3:45 a.m.
The Florida Freeway Patrol reported she was driving south on I-295 when she hit the guard rail on the proper shoulder of the entrance ramp to the interstate’s southbound lanes. Her vehicle came to a rest blocking the on-ramp from Town Middle Parkway to southbound I-295.
Armstrong got out and stood on the passenger side of the motor vehicle, according to the initial crash report.
“She experienced been out of the automobile having images of the destruction to her vehicle just after she hit the guardrail,” Linda Armstrong explained.
An SUV pushed by a 58-12 months-previous Jacksonville Seaside person touring up the on-ramp hit Armstrong and her motor vehicle. Armstrong died at the scene, the Highway Patrol claimed.
“I just want someone could give me answers. I just want solutions,” her mom stated.
The solitary mother lived for her youthful daughter. The two of them were like “two peas in a pod,” household and pals mentioned. Armstrong spared no price on her, regardless of whether it was dresses, spouse and children excursions, birthday events, Xmas and other holidays.
In so a lot of approaches, the small female resembles her mom in particular her kindness and caring for other folks. So significantly, she is coping with her mother’s passing by searching just after the adults caring for her.
“She has been more comforting to everybody else,” Her grandmother explained. “She is just like Ashley. ‘Don’t comfort me, I’m likely to ease and comfort you and make sure you are Okay.’ She cries, but she is stronger than I am really.”
Due to the fact her death, pals, co-workers and former classmates from Wolfson High Faculty and Florida Condition University at Jacksonville as perfectly as strangers have presented several prayers and condolences on social media.
Loving, devoted buddy and social butterfly
Armstrong enjoyed being a social butterfly but also was a loving, devoted mom and caring, loyal close friend, claimed buddy Jasmine Alexis.
“I was involved in a seriously negative vehicle incident about three years ago and virtually shed my daily life. Ashley was a person of the only men and women who in fact came to stop by me,” Alexis stated. “She’s extremely loving and pretty caring.”
Armstrong touched the life of so a lot of persons without acknowledging it, Alexis told The Moments-Union.
She would be the very first to present encouragement, a smile, a compliment or only sit with someone in have to have of convenience.
“I’m so grateful to have been blessed with your spirit,” Alexis wrote on the GoFundMe page. “Thank you for bringing so considerably joy you brought to your loved types.”
Joshnae Hicks experienced acknowledged her considering the fact that center faculty.
“She was just a very dazzling and beautiful soul,” reported Hicks, who became mates with Armstrong when both equally attended Fletcher Center Faculty in Jacksonville Beach. Afterwards both equally attended Wolfson whilst in various classes then each have been at FSCJ at the similar time.
“Ashley is extremely outgoing. Just all all over a quite sweet human being always smiling, comprehensive of energy, usually playful and just all-all-around a incredibly sweet, form-hearted person,” Hicks claimed.
Like numerous of Armstrong’s pals, Hicks speaks of her in the present tense. Her death has been tough to reconcile with the lively, caring and fun-loving young girl they knew and liked.
Hicks reported she and Armstrong hadn’t saved in as close contact as older people as when they ended up children who experienced sleep-overs alongside one another and were almost inseparable.
Nonetheless, her friend’s sudden death is devastating. It really is nonetheless a shock, she said.
“She was a younger, lively individual and she has a daughter and her daily life is long gone. It truly is tricky to believe that,” she explained.
Funeral arrangements experienced not been introduced.
Some of Armstrong’s good friends posted on Facebook there will be a “Brunch’n tribute” to her Sunday at Whispers Oyster Bar and Crabhouse, 331 W. Forsyth St. in downtown Jacksonville.
Armstrong cherished obtaining brunch with mates at Whispers. She’d been there very last Sunday — the working day just before she died, her mother stated.
