Kylie Rae Harris’s mother has said her daughter struggled with alcohol, after it was claimed that alcohol may have played a part in the crash that took her life.
The country singer, 30, was killed on Wednesday night in a three-car crash in Taos, New Mexico while driving to the Big Barn Dance Music Festival.
According to police, Harris, driving a black Chevrolet Equinox, struck a black Chevrolet Avalanche from behind, sending her vehicle into the northbound traffic lane.
Her vehicle then collided head-on with 16-year-old Maria Elena Cruz’s Jeep, which was traveling north on SR 522 at the time.
Both Harris and Cruz – the daughter of deputy chief of the San Cristóbal Volunteer Fire Department Pedro Cruz – were killed by the impact of the crash, while a third driver was uninjured.
Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe told Taos News: ‘At this time I will say with most certainty that Miss Cruz was an innocent victim of this senseless crash caused by Ms. Harris’, while alcohol is suspected to be a factor in the crash while investigators await results of a toxicology report.
Speaking to People, Kylie’s mum Betsy Cowan said alcohol was something her daughter ‘struggled with on-and-off over the years’ but declined to discuss it further ‘out of respect to both families’, saying that the ‘results are the same to her regardless of what caused it’.
Betsy said: ‘If you’ve ever had to take defensive driving, they say sleep deprivation, emotions and alcohol are the top three contributors to most wrecks. And so any one of those things could have done it…
‘She had driven 11 or 12 hours that day, and I’m sure that she was exhausted and she was emotionally exhausted. And I think we all know that what that does to you.’
Four hours before the crash, Kylie had shared an emotional Instagram story in which she teared up over the deaths of multiple family members in Taos, saying: ‘Literally everybody that was here has passed away except for my uncle and including my dad.’
Betsy revealed that Kylie would often drive in the early hours of the morning for long cross-country distances to get to festivals.
She said: ‘It’s a very dangerous life to lead. But she was made to do what she did, and I would never want her to have not been that.
‘It’s something that we worried about quite a bit when she started travelling like that because she wasn’t, honestly, famous enough to have a driver. She drove herself everywhere and sometimes her car was working well and sometimes it wasn’t. It was a daily struggle for her, and that’s true for a lot of startup musicians.’
Kylie – mum to six-year-old Corbie – had released her most recent EP in March, including the songs Big Ol’ Heartache, What The Heart Wants and Twenty Years From Now.
The latter song featured lyrics directed at her daughter who was sleeping in the backseat of her car, with Harris singing: ‘You deserve nothing less than happiness/ And so do I/ Twenty years from now/ My prayer is that somehow/ You’ll forgive all my mistakes and be proud of the choice I made/ God I hope I’m still around/ Twenty years from now.’
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