A 26-year-old Missouri bride-to-be snapped this selfie — and minutes later was killed in a car accident while traveling to her own bachelorette party.
Collette Moreno was on her way to the Lake of the Ozarks on Friday when the 2013 Chevrolet Malibu her best friend was driving collided with an oncoming car, Fox 4 Kansas City reported.
Moreno and Ashley Theobald, also 26, had been listening to Taylor Swift without a care in the world when they got stuck behind trucks belching fumes.
“She has really bad asthma and there were a few trucks in front of us that had really bad exhausts and she was coughing, so I was like, ‘OK, we have to pass these,’ ” Theobald told Fox 4.
Theobald tried to pass on the two-lane highway, but a 25-year-old man in a 1999 Dodge Ram pickup was heading the other way as they topped a hill. The two drivers tried to swerve out of each other’s way, but the truck still ended up hitting the passenger side of the women’s car, sending it off the left side of the road.
The pickup driver was not seriously injured in the crash. Theobald was taken to the hospital and treated for minor injuries.
But Moreno, who was wearing her seat belt, was taken to a Columbia hospital, where she was later pronounced dead.
“I was talking to her. She couldn’t talk back but she was nodding at me,” said Theobald, who had been close with Moreno since seventh grade. “I didn’t know it was as bad as it was, because she wasn’t physically super beaten-up.”
As soon as Moreno’s fiancé, Jesse Arcobasso, 28, found out about the accident, he jumped into his car and drove to the hospital.
“I was just trying to hold onto the fact that she was going to be OK,” Arcobasso said.
The two were supposed to be married July 26 in Jamaica. She leaves behind a 5-year-old son.
Moreno’s mother recalled hearing the tragic news.
“Complete shock. It wasn’t real,” she said. “It felt like a messed-up dream and I needed to wake up.”