Country singer Kylie Rae Harris was driving at about 102 miles per hour at the time of the fatal crash that killed her and a 16-year-old girl earlier this month, authorities said.
The 30-year-old was making her way to the Big Barn Dance in Taos, New Mexico, when she collided with a vehicle driven by Maria Elena Cruz, 16, and another vehicle.
Harris and Cruz were pronounced dead at the scene, while the third driver reportedly wasn’t injured in the head-on crash.
Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe said in a statement on Sept. 19 that the high speeds at which Harris was driving contributed to the three-vehicle collision. The sheriff’s office had been examining vehicle data recorders from the crash to recreate the scene.
Hogrefe added that alcohol may also have been a contributing factor to the crash, but said that he had not yet received toxicology reports from the Office of the Medical Investigator.
According to the sheriff’s office, the 30-year-old was driving along the southbound at speeds of over 100 mph when her Chevrolet Equinox rear-ended a black Chevrolet Avalanche.
Harris then veered into the oncoming lane before crashing into Cruz’s Jeep SUV, which was reportedly traveling at 51 mph, according to investigators.
“Braking was indicated three-tenths of a second before impact,” the Taos County Sheriff’s Office statement read.
According to court records, Harris struggled with alcohol in the past and had previously been charged for drinking and driving.
Harris’s mother, Betsy Cowan, spoke to People magazine just days after her daughter's death, and admitted she had struggled with alcohol. She added that her daughter may have been exhausted at the time of the fatal crash.
“And so any one of those things could have done it … She had driven 11 or 12 hours that day, and I’m sure that she was exhausted and she was emotionally exhausted. And I think we all know what that does to you.”
“If you’ve ever had a little kid and they run around the living room in circles trying to keep themselves awake and they look like they’re on steroids—I think that after driving 12 hours and being excited and wanting to stay awake, that that’s the probable frame of mind that she was in at that point. And that’s probably not safe, but we really won’t know the answer for quite some time,” Cowan added.