£1,500 raised in one day for children's nurse killed in M6 crash
More than £1,500 has been raised in memory of a nurse who was killed in a crash on the M6.
Victoria Kavanagh, aged 41 and from Oldbury, died after being involved in a crash with two lorries while driving on the M6 near Walsall on Monday.
She had two children, both young adults, and a fundraising page has been set up to help support them and pay for the cost of their mother's funeral.
The fundraiser was set up by Rebecca Lockley, a nurse from Telford who met Victoria while studying children's nursing at the University of Wolverhampton.
The friends graduated in January 2019 and Victoria had been accepted onto a master's degree course shortly before her death.
Rebecca said: "We started talking and we both just clicked and that was it, we were constantly doing things together.
"It is such a difficult course and student nurses are under so much pressure, and we both have children and once you share that it doesn't go away, we spent a lot of time together.
"She was aunty Vicky, and my daughter idolises her daughter.
"Vicky was so selfless, she would never accept help from anyone but help everyone else, she would even have given her last pound away to help someone who needed it."
Rebecca said the main motivation for organising the fundraising page was so that Victoria's daughter Katrina, 18, and son Daniel, in his early 20s, don't need to worry about finances while grieving for their mother.
"At 18 I would have had no idea what to do in that situation," she explained.
"They need that time to grieve not to think about who will we pay for bills and the funeral.
"The children's granddad is helping out too but he also needs time to grieve himself and that is really important.
"I am just lost for words, she was such an amazing person.
"At first we expected to raise a couple hundred pounds to pay for something like the flowers and it has grown and grown from there.
"We want to give her the send off that she deserves, even if people can just donate £1 that will go towards it."
The fundraiser was set up on Friday and by Saturday morning more than £1,500 had been donated by 76 donors, who described Victoria as an "amazing mother and daughter" and a "fantastic colleague".
Among those to offer their condolences was the nurse education team at the Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospital NHS Trust, where Victoria had worked on placement.
Police are investigating the crash, which happened in the northbound carriageway between junctions 9 and 10 shortly before 9am, and anyone with information is asked to contact the serious collision investigation unit.
To donate go to gofundme.com/f/in-loving-memory-of-victoria-kavanagh.
