Ashley Marie Armstrong’s daughter will turn 7 next month, but the 28-year-old Jacksonville mother won’t be there to celebrate with her.
Family and friends are mourning her death Monday when she was struck by a sport-utility vehicle while standing beside her disabled car on Interstate 295 at Town Center Parkway.
The telephone suddenly cut off as Linda Armstrong tried to console her distraught daughter who was in tears because her sedan clipped a guard rail as she drove home from work.
“She was crying and kept saying, ‘My car, my car, What am I going to do. I need my car. How will I get to work?’ I kept telling her, ‘Calm down, calm down, it’s just a car.’ Then the next minute the phone went beep, beep and went dead,” Armstrong said Wednesday as she recalled the last words spoken with her only daughter.“I kept calling and calling and calling, thinking she was going to pick up. … I went and drove the route to find her but didn’t see anything. I came home and the state trooper was there. He didn’t have to say a word, I knew it was bad, real bad,” she said with tears in her voice.
She’s established a GoFundMe online fundraiser to assist with funeral expenses and help her granddaughter, who was the pride and joy of her mother.Ashley Armstrong was en route home from Mascaras Gentlemen’s Club when the crash happened about 3:45 a.m.
The Florida Highway Patrol said she was driving south on I-295 when she hit the guard rail on the right shoulder of the entrance ramp to the interstate’s southbound lanes. Her car came to a rest blocking the on-ramp from Town Center Parkway to southbound I-295.Ashley Armstrong was en route home from Mascaras Gentlemen’s Club when the crash happened about 3:45 a.m.
The Florida Highway Patrol said she was driving south on I-295 when she hit the guard rail on the right shoulder of the entrance ramp to the interstate’s southbound lanes. Her car came to a rest blocking the on-ramp from Town Center Parkway to southbound I-295.
Armstrong got out and stood on the passenger side of the vehicle, according to the initial crash report.
“She had been out of the car taking pictures of the damage to her car after she hit the guardrail,” Linda Armstrong said.
An SUV driven by a 58-year-old Jacksonville Beach man traveling up the on-ramp hit Armstrong and her car. Armstrong died at the scene, the Highway Patrol said.
“I just wish somebody could give me answers. I just want answers,” her mother said.
The single mother lived for her young daughter. The two of them were like “two peas in a pod,” family and friends said. Armstrong spared no expense on her, whether it was clothes, family trips, birthday parties, Christmas and other holidays.
In so many ways, the little girl resembles her mother especially her kindness and caring for others. So far, she is coping with her mother’s passing by looking after the adults caring for her.
“She has been more comforting to everyone else,” Her grandmother said. “She is just like Ashley. ‘Don’t comfort me, I’m going to comfort you and make sure you are Ok.’ She cries, but she is stronger than I am really.”
Since her death, friends, co-workers and former classmates from Wolfson High School and Florida State College at Jacksonville as well as strangers have offered numerous prayers and condolences on social media.
Armstrong enjoyed being a social butterfly but also was a loving, devoted mother and caring, loyal friend, said friend Jasmine Alexis.“I was involved in a really bad car accident about three years ago and almost lost my life. Ashley was one of the only people who actually came to visit me,” Alexis said. “She’s very loving and very caring.”
Armstrong touched the lives of so many people without realizing it, Alexis told The Times-Union.
She would be the first to offer encouragement, a smile, a compliment or simply sit with someone in need of comfort.
“I’m so thankful to have been blessed with your spirit,” Alexis wrote on the GoFundMe page. “Thank you for bringing so much joy you brought to your loved ones.”
Joshnae Hicks had known her since middle school.
“She was just a very bright and beautiful soul,” said Hicks, who became friends with Armstrong when both attended Fletcher Middle School in Jacksonville Beach. Later both attended Wolfson although in different classes then both were at FSCJ at the same time.
“Ashley is very outgoing. Just all around a very sweet person always smiling, full of energy, always playful and just all-around a very sweet, kind-hearted person,” Hicks said.
Like many of Armstrong’s friends, Hicks speaks of her in the present tense. Her death has been difficult to reconcile with the vibrant, caring and fun-loving young woman they knew and loved.
Hicks said she and Armstrong hadn’t kept in as close contact as adults as when they were children who had sleep-overs together and were nearly inseparable.
Nonetheless, her friend’s sudden death is devastating. It’s still a shock, she said.“She was a young, lively person and she has a daughter and her life is gone. It’s hard to believe,” she said.
Funeral arrangements had not been announced.
Some of Armstrong’s 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 loved having brunch with friends at Whispers. She’d been there last Sunday — the day before she died, her mother said.