Amanda Bradley said she cries when she thinks of the future she will miss with her daughter, the memories they won’t be able to create.
At around 7:40 on Sunday, Konstance Acacia Harris was driving west on Kellogg, driving home from a friend’s house. Family members think she may have fallen asleep at the wheel. She drove her boyfriend’s 2012 Honda Accord into a concrete wall and then landed in Washington.
The 22-year-old Wichita woman, whose modeling career had taken her across the United States and abroad, died at the scene.
Family and friends have described her as a positive, artistic, strong-willed animal lover who casually jumped into dance at work. She also loved skateboarding and nature. The Wichita East High grad worked at Cardiovascular Care, near Ninth and Hillside, with her mother when she returned home between modeling gigs that took her to New York, Los Angeles and Mexico.
This year was supposed to bring even more highlights: returning to New York later this month to work as a model, soon signings with agencies in London and Italy, the chance to embrace her father as a free man for the first time in his life and a planned proposal from her boyfriend.
“She was a real ray of sunshine,” mourned colleague and friend Shannon Soto. “Someone said she better not light up a room, she’s the light in the room.”
Soto said Harris would randomly break out into a dance while working and leave notes for people saying things like “you’re amazing” and other sticky note messages that she would sign with her name and a heart.
Harris’ beautiful smile was one of Soto’s most outstanding features. Bradley also said her daughter’s hair—long and curly—was something strangers noticed and always complimented her.
Her hair and smile also helped land her modeling gigs with Tommy Hilfiger, Nike, and Amazon. But it was her strong will that got her there in the first place.
That strong will was reflected in a December 2020 Instagram photo of her in an artistic photo leaning against reflective glass that she labeled as taken in Chinatown, Los Angeles. She captioned the photo, “I still remember the day I realized my only competition was the person in that reflection…now I’m unstoppable and the rest is history.” She finished the caption with a wink emoji.
She moved to Los Angeles to be a model
Harris was recruited by Wichita-based M&I Models after high school. Soon after, the 18-year-old moved alone to Los Angeles to pursue her modeling career.
She was very brave, Bradley said.
Harris signed with an agency there and added others in New York, Chicago and Mexico.
Just before COVID-19 hit in 2020, she was at home at a party and bumped into Dylan Vincent. She actually tripped and hit two heads when Vincent tried to catch her.
Vincent, who had played basketball at Highland Community College, and Harris became best friends, both denying that they were in love with each other. They moved to Los Angeles together and started dating after that. Vincent, after observing her during photo shoots and learning from her, also started modeling.
They had ambitious plans for their lives: to get married and raise a family, make enough money to open an animal shelter, maybe a tattoo shop, and buy a van in which they would travel around the country.
He had a pit bull mix named Nalah who he rescued from an abusive home and hand-fed a bottle when he was a puppy. His family has other rescues as well.
He loved all animals, but for some unknown reason, giraffes were his favorite, Bradley said.
Harris was also fond of tattoos and would have achieved more if not for modeling.
He had a red dragon on his back, an indication of his Chinese zodiac animal for his year of birth. With ink and a needle, she tried to draw a sun on her finger, but it looked more like an eyelash, so that’s what she called it.
He was more successful at drawing overlapping triangles on his chest. She liked triangles and she thought they were her strongest shape.
His future projects
When the police arrived and knocked on Bradley’s door, she didn’t realize what they had said.
“It didn’t work,” he said. “I was still in shock that they told me she had been in an accident. I should have known from the questions they were asking that she didn’t make it.
Police returned to the car and said they would be back with more information. When they returned, police said she was her daughter in the wreck; she didn’t make it.
Harris was supposed to move to New York with her boyfriend. They had already signed a six month lease. Harris’s flight was booked for February 12th.
The trip will be delayed now, but Vincent still plans to go and do everything possible to get what they dreamed of.
“I’m going to do it for her (and) I’m going to do everything I can to make her proud,” Vincent said. “There was no other kind of love” like hers.
“He loved a lot.”
He was in talks with agencies in London, Italy and Thailand which meant extensive travel to those places on business.
Vincent said Harris wanted an animal involved in every engagement, so an animal, a giraffe if possible, would be involved in the proposal he had planned for later this year.
Harris’ father, Vernon Harris, was on probation last year but was denied. He’s been in prison for most of his life, but the two have kept in touch. It’s possible he could be released later this year, Bradley said. Harris looked forward to seeing his father free for the first time.
Bradley said she cries thinking about the memories she won’t have with her daughter.
“I just wanted to see how much more it would grow and accomplish,” Bradley said. “I was excited for her. I tell everyone that it’s not the memories I have of her that make me cry, it’s me thinking about what she would have become and what we will miss is what upsets me the most.
In addition to his parents, Harris is also survived by a younger and older brother, Oli Dixon and Teondre Harris.
A GoFundMe to help the family with funeral expenses has exceeded its goal by $10,000. A funeral is scheduled for 1:00 am Tuesday at Resthaven Cemetery at 119th & Kellogg West Wichita.
