Hundreds of friends and loved ones gathered Tuesday night at a vigil remembering the life of a teenager killed in a crash at a Cape Coral intersection.
15-year-old Kendra Ahrens rode her bike along Santa Barbara Boulevard July 31 when a truck crashed into her. Kendra would have been a junior at Mariner High School.
She was a flyer at her school's cheerleading team.
Ella Roebuck said the first time she met Kendra was during a cheer stunt Freshman year.
"It was our first time going in a fall... my only job is if she falls, I catch her right?" Roebuck said. "I get so scared and I ducked my head down. And she goes over me and she like hits the back of her neck on the mat."
She said that failed stunt opened the door to years of friendship.
"She's kind of crying, but not really. I walk out and I'm bawling and I go in the bathroom and I call my mom. I'm like, mom, I just dropped this girl. She's going to hate me forever. And then we ended up, like, just kept on talking and we got, like, best friends."
Soon, Bailey Johnson and Isabela Maurer joined the picture. They became inseparable.
"I started being friends with all three of them. And then we came. We became this unbreakable bond and nobody. We were always together. We'd always meet up at a certain spot for, bench, right in front of the school. And that was always our spot," Johnson said.
The three said Kendra was so cheerful, they gave her the nickname "giggles."
"Bubbly. Definitely. And she's always, like, jumping up and down and like like almost like squirrely too. Like she is always like so like squeaky and like screaming, jumping around and giggling. She was always laughing. She was always just so, so, so happy about, like, everything," Roebuck said.
Abby Griffin was also a part of the team.
"If you had a chance to meet her as a person. God, the sweetest soul you would ever meet," she said. "She would never even kill a bug. That's how sweet she was."
Abby said Kendra was like a little sister.
"It’s just to see her to not hear her voice or even to see her in a couple years and she said and I just wish that she wasn’t gone so soon," She said.
Candles, lights, and hugs all formed part of a tribute of love for Kendra Tuesday night as friends remembered her.
"The vigil is just the beginning for us to really kind of come together and remember this beautiful little girl," Former coach Victoria Woods said. "It's a reminder to slow down, slow down in life in general. on these streets and hug somebody a little tighter."