CHELSEA, Vt. (AP) – A 17-year-old girl from Jay was killed Sunday when she lost control of her brand-new snowmobile on Jenkins Brook Road.

Jackie Lakin failed to negotiate a turn on the narrow, winding back-road linking Chelsea and Strafford, flew over the handlebars and hit two small trees, said Vermont State Police Sgt. Jim Cruise.

The preliminary cause of death was a severed aorta, he said.

Accompanying Lakin on the trip were Levi and Janet Chambers, a Tunbridge couple who live nearby.

Levi Chambers said Monday night that he and his wife met the teenager about three years ago when she and her family moved to Tunbridge.

The family fell on hard times and moved in with them before leaving town, said Chambers.

Lakin was most recently in state foster care for the past year, he said, and the Chambers provided respite for her foster parents.

The Tunbridge couple saw her every couple of weekends, and had watched her grow up, he said.

Quiet and shy, she seemed comfortable in their home and had opened up to them, he said, adding that she wanted a job one day where she could work with children.

“She was practically a daughter,” said Levi Chambers.