Ohio Mom Killed by Nail on Birthday Trip to Florida During Hurricane Ian

An Ohio mother was killed by a nail that hit her main artery after hurricane Ian tore down the roof of the place where she was staying.

Nishelle Harris-Miles was in Fort Myers with her sister, her cousin, and a friend to celebrate her 40th birthday on September 23, NY Post reports. Shortly after their arrival, the Category 4 storm ripped through the Sunshine State and tore off the roof of the room they were staying in.

“We strapped ourselves to each other with a sheet, laid on the mattress. That water came out that floor so fast, so quick. The roof was smashing us,” Harris-Miles’ cousin Chanel Maston told WLWT.

“We tried to kick off the roof and lay on the mattress. It kicked off that roof, so that roof wouldn’t smash us and the roof went, and we went,” Maston continued.

“We started calling people before the water really started rising,” Maston said.

“We called 911. We called 211. We called everybody to get us out of there, and nobody came,” she added.

Maston went on to describe the freakish manner in which she lost her cousin so soon after celebrating a milestone birthday.

“She got trapped under. A nail pierced her main artery,” Maston said. “She just turned 40. Sept. 23, she just turned 40. She died nine days after her birthday.”

LaQuitta Heard was on the ill-fated trip and recalls watching her close friend “slowly die” while they were stuck in the wild storm.

“I personally will never be the same again,” Heard told WHIO. “Went for peace and came back broken, lost, confused, guilty.”

On Sunday, the mourners gathered in Dayton for a balloon release to remember Harris-Miles.

“The children will be mostly affected. They no longer have a mother,” family friend Will Crusoe told News 2. “She was a loving type of person, she passed love wherever she went,” he told WHIO. “She touched a lot of souls.”