Hailee Steinfeld Performs at Vigil for New York Teen Killed in Go-Kart Crash
Hailee Steinfeld made the pain of loss a little bit easier Wednesday night (February 28) when she performed at the vigil of a teen superfan from New York who'd been killed in a freak go-kart accident.
Leah Kuczinski, a 10th-grader at New Hyde Park Memorial High School in Long Island, died earlier in February — just days after her 16th birthday — while on vacation in Florida, according to local station News 12. Her Spanish teacher Tiffany Salcedo, who knew that Kuczinski was a huge fan of Steinfeld's, reached out to the pop star on social media a day before the vigil was planned, and thanks to the support of fellow faculty and classmates, Steinfeld heard the message loud and clear, and showed up to sing "Starving" with Kuczinski's friends and classmates.
"Thank you guys all so much for asking me to come here and honor Leah," Steinfeld said in videos uploaded to Instagram and Twitter. "You all had so many incredible things to say about her, I really would have loved to have met her. I know she was supposed to come to my show this summer, so I wanted to come here and sing a song for her."
"Leah loved Hailee," Salcedo told NBC New York. "She'd ask me to play her songs during class."
"[Steinfeld is] a class act," Salcedo added. "Not many people would have taken the time to come and fly when they have to be somewhere else in the morning."
A GoFundMe page has raised nearly $90,000 for Kuczinski's funereal expenses.
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