A New Mexico State University student who was home for the Christmas holiday was killed in a car accident on his 21st birthday, according to Española Police.
Bryan Sanchez was the driver of a Chevy sedan that went off the side of State Road 76 near the Santa Cruz Post Office Dec. 24 at around around 4:20 a.m., a police report states. The car entered a ditch, overturned, struck a cinderblock wall and was thrown into the air, the report states.
The car came to rest upside down on a steel bar fence, and sustained damage throughout, the report states. Sanchez was trapped under the car and pronounced dead at the scene, according to the report and dispatch logs.
The only passenger, 20-year-old Alejandro Garcia of Santa Fe, was transported to Española Hospital, treated and released, and did not complain of injuries, according to the report.
Crystal Baca, a resident of a rental home near where the crash occurred, was awakened by the sound and called police.
“I looked outside and saw the vehicle was flipped and I called 911,” Baca said.
The rock wall bordering the entrance to her yard and a fence were halfway torn down in the accident, Baca said. The property owner, Wayne Montoya, said Tuesday that in his opinion the size of the ditch that Sanchez’s car entered contributed to the accident.
“It’s very dangerous for people who drive through there,” Montoya said. “The neighbor made it wider — the rest of the ditches are deep and narrow.”
Sanchez’s mother Rita said her son had been at a friend’s house celebrating his birthday and was driving Garcia home when the accident occurred. Rita Sanchez said her son did not know Garcia well. One of his friends who was at the get-together told Rita Sanchez her son wasn’t drunk when he left. Police did not find any evidence that alcohol played a part in the crash, Detective Bryan Martinez said hours after the accident.
Rita Sanchez had planned to leave Dec. 26 for a week in Puerto Peñasco, Mexico, with her son and daughter, she said. Sanchez was in his junior year and was thinking of switching his major from mechanical engineering to business. He attended Los Alamos High School where he was a wrestler and a National Hispanic Merit Scholar.
“He was so focused, he was just on top of the world,” Rita Sanchez said. “He really had his whole life in front of him.”