Women go to Tampa for girls’ trip. One ends up in the ICU, and another can’t feel her limbs: ‘Because of one person’s choice’

Few people go on vacation expecting to be hospitalized. But all kinds of travel, from air to car, run the risk of bodily harm.

One woman is going viral for sharing an accident she and her friends endured while on a lighthearted vacation. According to her, a drunk driver hit their vehicle, which resulted in catastrophic consequences.

What happened during the girls' trip?

Content creator Kuru (@kuruthegemini) posted a video about a life-threatening experience she and her friends had during a group trip to Tampa. The video has more than 147,000 views.

“I cannot move my right leg,” Kuru said. “My best friend is in the ICU with no feeling, chest and below. My other friend, she walked out just fine, but with a lot of soreness in her neck and her shoulders … The girls' trip was supposed to be fun.”

Kuru said the girls had “a lot of plans” they were excited to execute and “things that [they] wanted to,” but then the trip got derailed by an underage drunk driver.

“Things took a turn Thursday night, when a selfish individual decided to get on the road extremely intoxicated,” Kuru said. “We were in a big truck… a Nissan Armada. We staggered ourselves, not intentionally. My best friend was sitting in the back, driver's back row. I was sitting in the middle row, driver's side. And our friend was sitting in the passenger side, up at the front. The car hit us directly from the back.”

@kuruthegemini Nothings funny today unfortunately My lil heart hurts. #girlstrip #tampa #florida #storytime #tripgonewrong ♬ Clair de lune – Debussy , Soft Piano(1076685) – Noi m knot

What happened to the car and passengers?

Kuru said the car was “completely crushed,” leaving every single person in the party injured. The degree of injury varied from person to person. In a follow-up video, she said her friend in the ICU, Dominique, had “[broken] her spine at c6 and c7.” Kuru also said the drunk driver had “very minimal insurance coverage,” so the friend group would be helping her pay for rehab and medical bills via a GoFundMe fundraiser.

“One person's choice … could have ruined multiple families' lives,” Kuru said. “It's absolutely changed my life. Changed my friend's life, who's sitting in the ICU right now, who had plans for her year too.”

In the comment section of another video, Kuru told one of her viewers that the friend in the ICU had moved into rehab and “is in amazing spirits!” Kuru expressed confidence that “she'll make a full recovery soon enough.” Kuru herself is currently undergoing physical therapy to “[try] to get [her] right leg to act like [her] left.”

How to protect yourself from drunk drivers

While there is no foolproof method to avoid paying the price for someone else's decision to drive drunk, experts agree on a few key procedures that can maximize your safety on the road. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says that “every day, about 32 people in the United States die in drunk-driving crashes — that's one person every 44 minutes.”

Element Fleet, an automotive website, says that recognizing the signs of an impaired driver is one of the first steps in avoiding collisions.

Telltale signs of impairment include swerving between lanes, fluctuating between high and low speeds, and making excessively wide turns. The website notes drivers may seem “distracted or unaware of surrounding factors or take longer to respond to traffic lights or stop signs.”

Element Fleet advises drivers to never seek confrontation with impaired individuals, but rather to maintain a “safe distance” from them and call 911. Personal injury attorney Kenneth Berger echoes these sentiments.

Buzz News has reached out to Kuru via TikTok comment.