An 18-year-old Texas woman slammed her vehicle into a home in Stephenville in the early hours of Sunday morning, killing a mother and her 7-year-old son.
Gracie Yates was charged with two counts of criminally negligent homicide for the crash, which happened just before 3:30 a.m., the Stephenville Police Department said.
Several members of the family were injured and taken to a hospital, where 49-year-old Barbara Rocha and 7-year-old Alex Aaron Rocha were pronounced dead, KDFW reported.
Raul Rocha, Barbara Rocha’s adult son, told the station that his father called him Sunday morning to tell him what had happened.
“I never imagined this to happen to me. I never imagined losing my mom. My mom does not deserve this,” he said. “She was so sweet. She always cared about us. She cared about anybody around her.”
Another brother was inside the home at the time but was uninjured. That brother, Rocha said, told him that all he heard was the crash and went into the room to hear his younger brother “screaming and my mom praying.”
“And that’s what I have stuck in the back of my head right now my little brother screaming, and my mom praying,” Raul Rocha said.
A GoFundMe set to help the family with funeral and living expenses, since their home was essentially destroyed, said that Yates, a natural born American citizen, was drunk, but police made no mention of intoxication and she was not charged with anything relating to intoxication.
According to Law&Crime, she was given a bond of less than $15,000 and bonded out on Tuesday.
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[Featured image: Gracie Yates/Erath County jail and Barbara and Alex Aaron Rocha/GoFundMe]
