Fultondale Mourns Deaths Of 2 FHS Students This Week

FULTONDALE, AL - The community of Fultondale is mourning the deaths of two Fultondale High School students who died this week. Monday, 17-year-old Shelton Waldrop died after battling a rare form of lung cancer, and Tuesday, 14-year-old Destiny Marie Walker died in a car accident. The two were reportedly friends with one another.

“It’s just shocking,’’ said Fultondale High School principal Stephanie Robinson to Alabama Media Group. “We should not be dealing with death and the students should not be facing this.”

The crash that killed Destiny happened at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in the 8000 of Rouse Road. Destiny was a passenger in a Honda traveling northwest when the car appears to have veered off the right side of the road, over-corrected and then struck a tree on the left side of the road. The impact split the sedan in half.

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Authorities said the surviving victims are the 16-year old driver and two 15-year-old passengers. One of them was taken to Children’s of Alabama and two others to UAB’s freestanding hospital in Gardendale. One of the girls was critically injured and the other two were injured but not critically. The survivors did not attend Fultondale schools.

Shelton, a junior, was diagnosed with cancer in 2016 after he began to complain of shoulder and side pain. After several weeks of thinking it might be a pulled muscle, he went to the doctor for tests and a chest x-ray showed his lung was collapsed and collecting fluid. On March 4, 2016, his father said, his son was diagnosed with Synovia Cell Sarcoma, becoming one of only 52 adolescents in the world with the disease at the time.

"The deaths have hit hard both the faculty and student body at Fultondale High School. These two students we lost were bright, shining starts, wonderful examples of how we should live our lives," Robinson said.