HOMESTEAD, Fla. – A family is devastated. Their loved one was just 14 years old. Police said the driver of the car he was riding in was turning its lights off and speeding away from officers on two different occasions.
Tears streamed down the face of Magaly Amado as she tried to make sense of where she felt like she failed her great grandson.
Terrance Valivia, 14, was killed in a Homestead crash along with two other teens after police said a car with four people in it barreled through an embankment, crashing into a canal near East Palm Drive and Southeast 28th Avenue early Saturday morning.
“If I was a crazy person and giving a bad example then OK fine, but it is not like that. That’s why it really hurts,” Amado said. “He was a good boy.”
His sister, Precious Fernandez, said Valivia was out with a group of friends late into the night when he was supposed to be home before midnight.
“I was shook when I got the messages. I wasn’t expecting that,” she said. Fernandez said she had texted her brother at 2 a.m. but didn’t get an answer.
Homestead police told Local 10 that the driver of the car that Valivia was in cut off a marked police vehicle just after 3 a.m.
According to Homestead Police Detective Eric Rodriguez, the car that crashed was the same vehicle that fled from officers not once, but twice early Saturday morning.
Fernandez said she had warned her brother. “I told him plenty of times to stop hanging around with that person. He didn’t listen.”
Three people died in the crash and 1 person was found outside of the car on an embankment. That person was reportedly in stable condition.