A high school quarterback was killed while trying to help a driver stuck on the side of a road in Florida early Sunday morning, authorities said.
Nick Miner, 18, stopped his pickup truck on the side of Dallas Boulevard in Orlando to assist another driver who was stuck, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.
While attempting to help, Miner’s truck was hit by another car and overturned. The teen was ejected from the vehicle and died at the scene.
Miner was a senior at East River High School.
East River High School’s Principal Becky Watson confirmed the tragic death in a Facebook post.
“I know I speak for our entire East River High community when I express the grief felt at the loss of one of our own,” Watson wrote.
In the statement, Watson said grief counselors will be available for students and staff beginning Monday.
Miner’s former classmates remembered him as a great friend and football player. Loved ones set up a memorial at the site of the crash Sunday, many leaving notes saying “I love you” and “I miss you.”
“We’re doing the best we can. It hurts. He was a brother of the family. I wish he was still here,” Parker Stoner, Miner’s teammate on the football team, told FOX 35.
Stoner described his friend as, “always a class clown, but a leader on the field.”
“He never gave up, always gave his all. Always made sure we were going 110 percent all the time,” he added.
According to the Florida Highway Patrol, a 27-year-old driver of a white Honda Insight headed north “failed to observe” Miner’s white pickup truck stopped in the road. Miner had attempted to pull the stopped car on the side of the road back onto the street when the crash took place.
Two other people, a 17-year-old girl and a 20-year-old woman who were standing outside of the stuck car on the side of the road, were also hit by Miner’s pickup truck as it overturned. They were taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Charges against the driver responsible for the crash are pending.
