MIAMI – The grieving family of a 23-year-old trained firefighter and paramedic who died after a head-on crash honored his memory on Friday at the Miami-Dade College Fire Academy.
Tiffany Urrutia said she has been crying every day since her son Ezekiel “Zeke” Urrutia died on Jan. 9 after a wrong-way car crash on the Florida Turnpike in Miami-Dade County.
“He wanted to save lives; that was his calling,” the grieving mother said. “He felt it was the most honorable career you could have ... to save somebody’s life.”
As of Friday, Florida Highway Patrol troopers had not arrested the 55-year-old Hialeah woman who was driving southbound on the Turnpike’s northbound lanes before the fatal crash.
“It’s the worst thing to have to live through,” Frank Urrutia, Ezekiel’s grieving father, said.
Karl Paul-Noel, the director of the Miami-Dade College Fire Academy, delivered a speech during the announcement of a new scholarship in Ezekiel’s honor.
“Zeke was more than a firefighter, he was a protector, a healer, and a true public servant,” Paul-Noel said. “His loss was indeed a tragedy, one that shook all of us in the fire service, but his legacy I can assure you will never be forgotten.”
The scholarship in memory of Ezekiel “Zeke” Urrutia will be awarded annually to a fire cadet at Miami-Dade College.
“I think he’s smiling from heaven,” his father said.