On the afternoon of February 26, 2008, our baby girl Alyssa was taken from us. Alyssa was killed instantly in a three-car collision in the 5100 block of Ogden’s Harrison Boulevard. She was coming home from a high school basketball game in Ogden with her friends. The car that clipped the car she was in was also full of her friends from Granger High School. The boy driving the other car tried to catch up to the car Alyssa was riding in, weaving in and out of traffic at high speeds. His car clipped Alyssa’s car, sending it into a spin and into the northbound lanes of traffic. Her car was T-boned by another vehicle. The driver of the northbound car was in the hospital for orbital fractures. Alyssa was killed and her friend Isaiah, who was driving Alyssa’s car, was treated for broken ribs and later released.

Dylan, another friend in the car with her, was hospitalized for a broken pelvis and other complications. Getting the news that your daughter has died in a car crash is the worst feeling a mother can have. Seeing her lying there on that hospital bed motionless just about killed me. Since that day, my life has been awful. It has been really hard to get up and go to work. I have lost my most precious child to someone else’s carelessness. She was a determined girl who worked to be the best she could, whether it was at home taking care of her three younger brothers, Reuben, Gregory and Anthony, or at school with her studies or with cheerleading.

In a moment, our lives were changed forever. A senseless crash took our daughter, sister, granddaughter, niece and friend. Her beautiful hazel eyes and bright smile would light up a room. Her laughter has been silenced, but her spirit will live on with us forever. She proved that a short life is not an incomplete life. The lives she touched will never be the same, and each day without her is a day where we will mourn our loss and remember our good fortune for having had her in our lives.

This crash should never have happened because one kid was not paying attention to the road or the people’s lives that were in danger while he was driving aggressively. Unfortunately, the boy driving the car that hit Alyssa wasn’t driving with his head. Now all we are left with is memories. We miss her so much and want her with us but the careless actions of this other driver robbed us of a life with “Lys.”