erika roman

erika roman

A popular Orlando radio DJ was killed Friday when she tried to avoid debris on Florida's Turnpike and her car ended upside down underwater about 20 miles south of Osceola County.

Erika Roman, 31, the morning host on Power 95.3 FM, was killed in the 1:30 p.m. single-car crash.

A Florida Highway Patrol report says she was driving southbound on the Turnpike in the right-hand lane and swerved to the left to avoid a lounge chair in the road.

She then overcorrected her 2007 Nissan Sentra and drove off the highway and onto the shoulder, according to the report. That's when her car flipped several times as it traveled more than 50 feet to a roadside canal and came to rest upside-down and submerged.

A Highway Patrol trooper and another motorist went into the water to rescue the car's lone occupant. The other motorist was injured in his rescue
attempt and was taken to a hospital, but the trooper was able to pull Roman from the water. He performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation for 20 minutes, but was unable to revive her.

She was pronounced dead at Lawnwood Medical Center in Fort Pierce.

In Roman's final note to friends about 8 a.m. on the Web service Twitter, Roman said: "Ready to go to MIAMI today! Gonna hang with the fam!!!"

The radio station offered praise for Roman on its Web site.

"Erika was a wonderful, passionate, caring person and she will be missed greatly by all of her friends and family.

"If determination had a face, it would look like Erika Roman. If passion had a voice, it would sound like Erika Roman. And if character had a touch, it would feel like Erika Roman."

According to the station's biography of Roman, she was born and raised in New York City and has been in the music business for more than a decade.

In her late teens, she was taken under the wings of New York entertainment impresario Sal Abbatiello of Fever Records. She promoted nightclubs for Fever Records while attending Marymount Manhattan College in New York, where she earned a bachelor's degree in communications and media. She also co-hosted a show on co-host on State University of New York at Stonybrook's popular college radio station.