Update:
Friends have identified the woman killed Friday in Naramata as Kyra Holt.
“She absolutely completed everybody,” said Subrina Monteith, who started a Facebook tribute page Saturday afternoon in memory of Holt.
Monteith said the two became friends about 12 years ago when Holt worked as a waitress at a Penticton pool hall, and they stayed close ever since.
She described Holt as “a ray of sun,” and “absolutely the most beautiful person inside and out.”
Monteith said Holt worked more recently as a nursing unit clerk at Penticton Regional Hospital, enjoyed outdoor activities and had an adult son.
According to police, Holt died when she fell out of the back of a moving pickup truck, but Monteith said her friend wasn’t known as a risk-taker.
“I think it was a freak thing, for sure. I mean, she lived life to the fullest, but she wasn’t a daredevil,” said Monteith.
Another friend, Terri Lamb, said she's heard Holt had been walking dogs with a friend on the KVR Trail before catching the ill-fated ride into Naramata.
Holt was “the most amazing person you’d ever meet... a friends-with-everybody-type of person," Lamb said.
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A 39-year-old woman is dead after she fell out of the back of a moving pickup truck Friday night in Naramata.
The mishap occurred around 9 p.m. on Robinson Avenue across from Naramata Elementary School near the village centre.
RCMP spokesman Cpl. Dan Moskaluk said in statement that the woman was riding in the back of the southbound truck when she “apparently lost her balance and fell to the asphalt… suffering fatal head injuries.”
He said another female was also riding in the back with the victim, and the truck was being driven by a 28-year-old male. No names have been released.
Moskaluk said the group had apparently been out for a ride on the KVR Trail before the incident, and everyone involved is co-operating.
The statement did not indicate if police are considering charges or where the victim resided, other than to say she was a “local.”
Naramata Fire Chief Will McCutcheon said only that his department was paged out to a report of a cardiac arrest and that members were unable to revive the patient.
On Saturday morning, a pair of gold-coloured women’s shoes were arranged on the side of Robinson Avenue near the accident scene, and droplets of what appeared to be blood were still visible in the dirt on the road’s shoulder.
A man who lives near the school and asked not be identified, said he walked over to the scene Friday and saw blood on the road and what appeared to be a lifeless human body under a blanket.
The mood at the scene was apparently subdued.
“It seemed to be like an honest mistake, not something the result of an accident. The police weren’t really being aggressive,” he said.
Moskaluk said a collision analyst and the coroner are still investigating, and no further information on the incident will be released this weekend.
