- May 2, 2024
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At around 2 p.m. Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Tricia James said goodbye to her mother and left to hang out with friends. James left the home on Rae Drive in Palm Coast and never came back. At 5 a.m. on Thanksgiving, a trooper from the Florida Highway Patrol knocked on the door and told Tara Krawiec that her daughter had died in a car crash. She was 22.
“I was in shock,” Krawiec said on Monday, Dec. 2. “I wanted (the trooper) to hurry up and leave so I could break down.”
According to the FHP, James was traveling southbound on Pine Lakes Parkway just after 1 a.m. on Thanksgiving, when she crossed the center line and traveled into the path of a Dodge Durango driven by 18-year-old James Rumph, of Palm Coast. Tricia James was pronounced dead on the scene, and Rumph was transported to Florida Hospital Flagler with serious injuries.
Both drivers were wearing seatbelts. Rumph had no alcohol in his system. The test is still pending on James.
And that uncertainty is leaving a sting in the air for Krawiec.
“An eye witness said she had been driving erratically,” Krawiec said. “I don’t know what happened that made her go across that line. I don’t know if she was inebriated, if she fell asleep.” She said James also was susceptible to seizures if she took medication.
“She’s 22,” Krawiec said. “And kids at that age — it’s all a possibility. … I’m not going to know until the autopsy.”
But although James had “a few brushes with the law,” Krawiec said, including an incident when she was arrested for disorderly conduct after drinking one night on the beach, Krawiec believes her daughter knew better than to drink and drive.
“When her friends all turned 21, she was the one who stayed sober and carted them around,” Krawiec said. “Her family is in utter disbelief that this happened. We take some comfort in knowing that the person she hit walked away with his life.”
James’ sister, Ashley Brickell, 19, remembers her as a fun-loving person. They didn’t have a perfect relationship, but, Brickell said, “We were getting there, getting closer and closer by the day.”
One day when other kids were picking on Brickell in middle school, she recalled, James encouraged her by saying, “Don’t let anyone tell you who you are. Be yourself, not who others want you to be.” That lesson has helped Brickell stand up for herself ever since, she said.
“She was always quick to point out an injustice, and she would fight for her friends to the bitter end, no matter what the problem was,” Krawiec said. “She loved her friends, and she loved her family.”
James was a 2009 graduate of Flagler Palm Coast High School. She worked at Red Lobster in Daytona Beach. She loved to spend time with friends and play with her dog, Maggie. A funeral service will be Friday, in Titusville.
“I still have three other children,” Krawiec said. “I have no other choice but to move on and to hope that we can all learn something from this.”
She added: “I’m going to use the opportunity to beg her friends to properly plan so that this doesn’t happen to any of their parents. … I don’t know how to describe the horror or the pain that goes into losing a child — no matter what that child did.”
