Lakeland police<\/a> say she was hit and killed Monday night after entering the crosswalk on North Lake Parker Avenue. <\/p>\n\n\n\nInvestigators say she entered the crosswalk in front of a semi-truck pulling a trailer that was traveling southbound on North Lake Parker Avenue approaching the East Rose Street intersection on a green traffic light. The semi-truck entered into the left turn lane to turn east onto East Rose Street and then hit her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“There are a lot of broken hearts out there right now because of this,” Jason Smith, Lena’s boyfriend of 15 years, said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Smith says he was on the phone with her just before the crash. He says the call dropped and when he tried calling her back, she didn’t answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I pinged her phone and her GPS was in the middle of the street. I called Jane, her mom, and I said, ‘Man, there’s something wrong. There’s something wrong, this is not right,'” Smith said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He wasn’t wrong. Paramedics tried to save Lena’s life, but couldn’t. Right now, police say the driver of the semi-truck is Gregory Pinkney Hope of Lakeland, but no charges have been filed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“How could something like this, something so tragic happen? Why can’t she finish with dreams? She just turned 36,” Jane Bouboudis, Lena’s mother, said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She’s been by her daughter’s side throughout her life’s journey. Lena was a loving mother of two. She struggled with addiction to heroin for 18 years. Fourteen months ago, she made the decision to fight to better herself and was sober since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“She threw herself into it 100%. She’s amazing. She made me proud after all these years. She did it,” Jane said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The family says she got sober, was just about to get off probation early and headed to court Monday afternoon to file paperwork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I Ubered her over there and then she said she was taking a walk to come back. She texted me and said she felt like she was going to pass out. I asked why and that was it. I heard nothing,” Jane said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I hopped on my scooter and I rode there. I saw her and I just knew it was her. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. It was the worst feeling I’ve ever felt in my life,” Smith said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now they’re left with inconsolable pain and questions unanswered. After going through so much, Lena’s loss leaves her family hanging in the balance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A family is mourning and remembering the life of a 36-year-old woman who was just turning her life around.\u00a0 Lena Bouboudis was headed home Monday evening when Lakeland police say she was… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34423,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Screenshot-34.png\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n