Family and friends of FSU student killed in traffic accident call for improvements in road safety

Ellie Sims, a 20-year-old FSU sophomore, was killed in a car accident in late April. Now, people who knew her want to prevent what happened to her from happening to anyone else.

Kristen Sims, Ellie’s mother, said she and her husband traveled from Tennessee to ask Tallahassee City Council on Wednesday to take more pedestrian safety measures in the area around the intersection of Pensacola and Lorene streets – the intersection where her daughter was killed.

“There’s a hole in our family now that will never be filled. I mean, we’ll never be the same without her, and as a mother, I’m just devastated and we’ll never be the same,” she said.

She won’t be the only one speaking at the meeting. Stacey Butler, a Tallahassee resident and mother of one of Ellie’s friends, has helped organize a group of people who will speak during the public hearing. They will wear and hand out teal ribbons, Ellie’s favorite color.

Butler, who studied at FSU in the 1990s, said local authorities need to do more to protect students as development increases around campus.

“College City didn’t even exist back then. So the student population in College City has exploded, and I think the city and FSU need to put more effort into maintaining the city’s infrastructure and ensuring the safety of pedestrians who have to cross St. Augustine and Pensacola just to get to class,” she said.

Sims says the city has already contacted her and her husband about possible changes, but nothing has been implemented so far. She hopes the changes can prevent what happened to Ellie from happening to anyone else.

“Ellie was the kind of person who would have wanted her death to have a positive outcome,” she said.

The meeting is held on Wednesdays at 3 p.m., but public comment usually does not begin until 5 p.m.