FULTON, N.Y. — Students at a New York high school honored two teens who died as a result of an automobile crash, electing them posthumously as prom king and queen.
Rylee Marion Bartlett, 17, and Brady Niver, 16, were posthumously crowned as royalty at G. Ray Bodley High School in Fulton on Friday, the Syracuse Post-Standard reported.
The teens were involved in a head-on crash on April 30 in the town of Granby, according to the newspaper. Bartlett, who was driving the vehicle, died at the crash scene and Niver died on May 8. Bartlett was killed when her vehicle crossed into oncoming traffic at 5:35 p.m. EDT, the Post-Standard reported. Niver was a passenger in the vehicle.
They were both juniors at the high school and had planned to attend the prom as a couple.
Fulton students name Rylee Bartlett, Brady Niver prom queen, king, days after fatal crash https://t.co/paKdSq0sgS
— syracuse.com (@syracusedotcom) May 13, 2023
“I was questioning, at first, ‘Why would you take him now? You had your chance to take him Sunday,” Niver’s mother, Heather Niver, told WSYR-TV. “Why are you taking him now?’ I truly believe that those eight days had meaning, have impacted people and brought people together.”
The couple had been dating since the seventh grade and was looking forward to the junior prom, dubbed “A Night Under the Stars,” the Post-Dispatch reported. Niver was a triplet, and his two sisters attended the prom on Friday, WSYR reported.
Students cheered and clapped when the teens were announced prom queen and king in a video that was posted on Facebook. Students hugged and began dancing to Taylor Swift’s “Love Story,” according to the Post-Standard.
GoFundMe pages have been set up for Niver and Bartlett.
“It is with the heaviest saddest most cracked in half heart that I tell the world our Brady is gone,” Heather Niver wrote on her son’s page. “Today I woke up without my son. The first morning without him. It doesn’t seem real.”
“Rylee was beautiful and fierce,” her GoFundMe page read. “She is loved beyond measure.”
Oswego County Sheriff Don Hilton said that deputies were still investigating the cause of the crash, according to The Palladium-Times.
