Model Niki Taylor is in critical condition after a car crash left her with severe internal injuries. The 26-year-old beauty was a passenger in a vehicle that crashed into an electricity pylon in Georgia early Sunday morning.
“Everyone felt she was okay, and then she had severe stomach pains,” her publicist said. “There was no head injury, no facial lacerations. It was all internal trauma.” Doctors say she suffered serious liver damage, though there are no immediate plans for surgery. She is said to be conscious, but heavily sedated.
Driver James Renegar, 27, an old friend of Niki’s, told police he lost control of the vehicle after looking down to answer his ringing mobile phone. He and passenger John Lack, 30, were treated but released the same day. Officers do not believe drugs and alcohol played a role in the accident.
Niki, mother of six-year-old twins Jake and Hunter, was visiting friends in Atlanta and planned to return home to Florida to begin acting lessons. Her parents, Barbara and Ken Taylor, as well as her older sister, joined her at the Grady Memorial Hospital.
This is not the first tragedy to befall the Taylor family. Niki’s younger sister Krissy, once a well known model, died in 1995 at the age of 17 from an asthma attack.
Niki shot to stardom on the cover of magazines including Seventeen and Elle and has appeared in popular adverts for Cover Girl and Liz Claiborne, as well as the famed Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.
