Former student’s life cut short in drag racing incident

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O'liyah Pyburn

Candles are left at the site of the accident on Bluff Springs Rd.

Jaime Rios, Staff Writer

We all knew him as a great friend, a great brother, a great son, and a great-grandson. This person is Fabian Morales — a young man who lost his life due to a deadly street racing tragedy.

Everyone knew him as hard-working he would never ask anyone for anything he got everything on his own and was always there when you needed someone to vent to or even go play basketball with to get things off your mind. He was always the class clown. He knew how to make people smile and laugh and we will all miss him. He was a big impact on everyone around him. Sophomore Carlos Moreno even got him tatted on his arm.

He had just purchased the red Infinity that he drove in the race just a week before his death. Bluff Springs is known very well for late-night racing. I live in the area so I hear it around 11 p.m. regularly but this incident will definitely make an impact on young people in the neighborhood, making them think twice about street racing. It was a big wake up call to people who do it and the people who turnout to watch.

Morales, a former Akins student, died on Jan. 15 in the 7500 block of Bluff Springs Road in a collision in which his vehicle hit another racer’s vehicle. Morales was rushed to the hospital after being pulled from a red Infinity and died shortly after being admitted.

According to an article on Patch, the other driver was 20-year-old Jorge Luis Lopez Dominguez, who was arrested after returning to the crash site from where he had initially fled. He is charged two-second degree felonies, racing on a highway and failure to stop and render aid with bond set at $100,000, according to jail records.

As of now, many people are still hurt by this tragic event. Just mentioning him around my friends brings tears and the tone in their voice changes. Every time I pass the spot he passed I get goosebumps because even I still can’t believe he passed away, and I pass it every day before I get home so I think about him everyday. Everyone posts about him on social media so it’s hard to heal from it, but that’s just our way of coping with it.

It’s hard losing someone like Fabian because he was a friend that you could always depend on. I remember dropping him off at work at the end of summer and we just chilled and listened to music I wish we could do that one more time. He will forever be apart of everyone’s lives and he will forever live on in our hearts.

Fabian was the denition of a go-getter because every time his family needed something he would get the job done. He was really known for his work ethic he would always say stack or starve which basically means if you don’t work you don’t eat.

For me it made me realize that just because you are young, that doesn’t mean you can’t die. And it made me really appreciate my parents and sibling and not to take them for granted because you have to live for today because you might die tomorrow. Rest in paradise your friend Jaime Rios. #LLF

Rest in peace bro and until then see you later.