18-year-old killed in after-prom crash on Cape Cod identified by loved ones
Just an hour after she left her senior prom on Saturday night, an 18-year-old Falmouth High School student died in a rollover car crash.
Ava Lodico was identified by her friends and family as the young woman killed in the crash, according to WCVB and Boston 25.
Lodico had been driving at around 11 p.m. on Acapesket Road when her Range Rover SUV rolled and hit a tree, then caught fire, CapeCod.com reported.
Lodico couldn't be brought by helicopter to the hospital due to weather, the outlet said, and she later died at Falmouth Hospital.
Her senior prom, themed 'Garden of Lights' and held at the Coonamesset Inn, had ended just an hour earlier. The crash happened only 10 minutes from the prom venue.
'We were all just dancing and having a great time at prom,' a friend of Lodico's, Erin Barr, told Boston 25.
'It's just so upsetting that this happened and extremely surreal .... She was just the sweetest soul to everybody,' Barr said.
Counseling was made available to students on Sunday and Monday, according to a statement on Facebook from the Falmouth Police Department. The department and Falmouth High School did not immediately respond to MassLive for comment.
One of Lodico's friends, Jazzy Fernandes, said she got a call about Lodico's crash on Saturday night, Boston 25 reported.
She tried to go to the scene of the crash, but it was blocked off, and found out Lodico had died when she got to the hospital.
Fernandes told the outlet, 'It doesn't feel real.'
Another close friend of Lodico's, Bea Mariani, said the two had been planning their joint graduation party and just made their invite list, the outlet said. Mariani took the first boat back from Martha's Vineyard when she heard of her friend's death.
The investigation into the crash is ongoing and a cause has not yet been publicly identified as of Monday morning.
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