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From near-deadly crash to cap-and-gown: Jax high schooler shares inspiring story

A motorcycle crash caused Angelique Elliott to undergo three brain surgeries; now she's preparing to graduate Terry Parker High School on time with her class.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Sometimes, we refer to graduating school as ‘walking.’ But after a crash two years ago, Angelique Elliott, a senior at Terry Parker High School in Jacksonville, wasn’t sure she’d ever walk again – in the literal sense. In fact, her survival wasn’t certain after she was in a horrific motorcycle crash downtown.

“I was not wearing a helmet,” she said.

The crash happened in the wee hours of June 16, 2018, when she was a passenger, riding with a friend through the city streets. The driver, she said, failed to stop at a red light and hit a car crossing the intersection of Ocean and East Monroe streets. 

Elliott has no memory of the collision but told First Coast News that her friend told her he held her skull together until an ambulance arrived.

Her family didn’t know whether she would survive.

“[Doctors] really didn’t know,” her grandmother, Wendy Wilson said. “She had so much wrong with her.”

Doctors at U.F. Health Hospital had to remove half of Elliott's skull. 

“In order to help the swelling go down,” she said.

Elliott, 16 at the time, had a clot in her brain. She said she “had that cut open a total of three times,” along with surgeries on her leg and vocal cords.

Remarkably, she is about to graduate without having fallen behind the rest of her class.

“I had to learn my speech all over again, I had to learn memory,” she said.

But, while the near-tragedy imperiled her academic future in one sense, in another, Elliott said it ironically revived it. Her grandmother, who has been primarily raising her, agrees.

“She was getting all bad grades before the accident,” Wilson said.

Elliott said, before the crash, “It wasn’t looking so great. I really didn’t want to stay in school.”

Something about the experience, she said, was a turning point. Elliott said, in her life leading up to the crash, she had doubted her own abilities and prospects for the future.

“Instead of the accident being one of those things that just really pushes you back – it pushed me back far – but it made me really realize that in life you go through things and they’re going to knock you down. But, no matter what, you have to put your mind to something and be like ‘This is what I want to do’.”

All that time spent at the hospital helped crystallize an ambition within Elliott to pursue a nursing career.

“It made me sit there and think about my life, because you sit there for a while in the hospital room,” she said.

Having discovered a career goal – and despite having to re-learn some of her basic motor skills - Elliott actually improved her grades.

“This was her first time ever getting all A’s and B’s,” Wilson said, casting a proud smile at her granddaughter.

Those grades helped propel Elliott toward an acceptance to attend Florida State College Jacksonville in the fall, where she plans to begin her nursing study.

She also wants to write a book about her experience and how she has used it as a springboard to a brighter future.

“I just really want to put my story out there and, like, help as many people as I can,” she said.

She's already offering inspiration.

“If you think you’re not special, everybody is extremely special,” she said confidently. “If you put your mind to it and you stick to it, you can accomplish anything. No matter how bad your situation is, if you set those goals and you’re determined, you’re going to get there.”

Wilson said her granddaughter has "overcome a lot.

“Everything she was told she couldn’t do, she showed she could do,” Wilson said.

With so many important steps in the last two years, Elliott made it clear walking is on her mind – the kind one typically does while wearing a cap and gown. And although the coronavirus crisis has pushed the exact date and location of graduation ceremonies to an uncertain status, she spoke with unbridled enthusiasm about what she’s earned, so much, the hard way.

“Just a few more weeks and we’re done. We’re going to walk!”

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