According to DailyMail.com, the ICU nurse who slammed into oncoming traffic at 90 mph while running a red light in Los Angeles, killing six people, worked in a strip club and had a history of making suicidal threats after difficult breakups.
After the death of Germaine Mason, the Olympic silver medalist she had intended to marry, in a motorcycle accident in 2017, her life fell apart.
A source close to Nicole Linton, 37, revealed in an exclusive interview: “When I saw what had happened in LA, the first thing that went through my mind was that she had argued with her boyfriend and was drunk and trying to commit suicide.”
She had previously made threats to do it. I figured maybe this time she had followed through.
Linton reportedly argued with her boyfriend before getting into her black Mercedes-Benz and speeding through the busy intersection about ten miles south-west of downtown Los Angeles, though authorities have not found any evidence of alcohol or drugs in her system.
She is said to have a “profound history” of mental illness, according to her attorneys.
Currently, DailyMail.com is learning more about Linton’s troubled past, which includes several years spent working as a cocktail waitress in several New York City strip clubs, including the notorious Sin City and Club Eleven, both of which are located in the Bronx.
After hearing about the tragic accident, former Sin City manager Mike Diaz posted on Facebook that he remembered her as a “sweet and helpful” girl.
Wow, he wrote. It turns out that this is OUR Nicole from the days of Sin City.
She is a very nice and sweet girl, according to everyone who has worked with her.
This is heartbreaking, and I apologise to everyone involved as well as to her.
I sincerely hope that everyone receives a just and equitable result.
Additionally, according to information obtained by DailyMail.com, Linton confided in friends that she intended to wed British Olympian Mason, a close friend of world-beating sprinter Usain Bolt.
While visiting Jamaica, the island of his origin, Mason, 34, was killed in a motorbike accident in April 2017.
One of her friends said that Nicole changed as a result. She was deeply in love with him. They had discussed marriage, according to her. She probably never moved over it.
“I wondered whether she was attempting to end her life the way her ex lost his,” I said after seeing what had occurred.
It’s unknown whether Linton was aware that Mason, who won a medal in the high jump event at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China, was also dating Shari-Dee Barker, the mother of his two children.
At the time of Mason’s death, Barker was three months along with her second pregnancy.
Currently being held on six murder accusations is Linton. She also murdered Asherey Ryan, a pregnant 23-year-old whose nearly-term kid was torn from her womb on impact, her 1-year-old son Alonzo, and Reynold Leyster, the father of her unborn child. There are still two unidentified female victims.
One of a pair of Jamaican immigrants’ three daughters, Linton was raised in Mount Vernon, New York.
She attended Howard University, where she graduated in 2007 with a BA in Marketing and reached the Dean’s List.
She was referred to as “lovely, brilliant,” and “a genuine go-getter” by a number of sources, but one source said that the mental health problems that her attorneys had mentioned have been readily visible for years.
She was wild, according to someone who has known her for more than ten years.
The whole club scene was a chaotic cycle of drinking, partying, and going out.
Nicole might have extreme highs or deep lows, and looking back, I believe that many of her actions were overlooked because of how sweet she was, but I’m certain that she was bipolar.
She could be really feisty, and I have seen her sometimes lash out violently at men.
Rocky relationships contributed to what seemed to be a process of unravelling that Linton was unable to stop despite several attempts to put her life back on track, according to a former acquaintance.
It didn’t help that she had a problematic drinking connection.
They stated, “She was the “bad” one in her family, and she felt compelled to uphold that reputation with her extremely kind and intelligent parents.
She wasn’t poor; her family was loving, and one of her sisters worked as a nurse.
I believe that is how Nicole was affected by it.
She was disappointed that she couldn’t find a position where she could apply her marketing degree, but she never said that back then.
In 2009, a business restructure caused Linton to lose his position as a sales manager for General Motors in Westchester County, New York, where he was responsible for providing franchisees with automobiles.
She began working in strip clubs all throughout New York City at that time.
I don’t recall her ever being cruel or vicious, but I did see some kind of mental health difficulties, according to one person.
She would fluctuate between extremes. Additionally, she mentioned committing suicide more than once when she and a boyfriend had an altercation.
Nicole was one of those individuals, “I believe boys may be quite triggering for certain girls.”
She dated a number of athletes, and the [strip] clubs gave her access to that kind of world, according to a friend.
‘It was a wild time, not just Nicole was wild. But it appears that she was unstable because she was unable to cope.
Diaz, 57, a former manager of Sin City, remembered Linton as “simply an exceptionally sweet lady” who waited tables for him for almost two years without ever causing him any issue.
He said that when he first saw images of Linton in the dock, he didn’t immediately identify her as the girl he knew as “our Nicole.” Instead, he saw “this troubled lady with weird hair.”
This whole situation simply seems really out of character, he remarked. She was kind, helpful, and diligent.
Strip clubs may have a somewhat competitive atmosphere, but Nicole always got along with the other women there since they were all really kind back then and tended to hang out together.
She always had a grin on her face, but now that I see it, I’m wondering whether it was masking a great deal of suffering.
Diaz called everything that happened a “Shakespearian tragedy.”
He said, “I saw the footage, and what is so upsetting to me is that there is absolutely no attempt to slow down.
“It seems to me like a deliberate and failed attempt by her to destroy herself, but somehow she survives and destroys so much else,” the author said.
Linton started working as a “extern” at NYU in 2010, but she didn’t finish her nursing degree until 2015.
After her parents left for Jamaica, according to a different story, Linton moved to North Carolina to live with her sister.
She wanted to leave that situation, in my opinion, and return to a more secure place.
Then she relocated to Texas. Her LinkedIn profile states that she originally worked in Laredo before moving on to several hospitals in Houston.
In 2020, she obtained her travel ICU registered nursing licence and is now qualified to work in California, Texas, and Hawaii.
At the Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles Hospital, she was doing contract work while in Los Angeles.
She did this while working for nurse contracting organisation AMN Healthcare, which she joined in 2020.
Following the revelation that Linton had a “profound history” of mental illness and had been involved in 13 prior car accidents, including one in 2020 that resulted in the total loss of two vehicles, Kaiser Permanent has referred all inquiries about the screening procedures for contract nurses back to AMN Healthcare.