Mother hopes memorial deters drunk driving
The family of Danielle Morgan release balloons at the scene of the fatal drunk driving accident that took her life last summer.
Linda Morgan hugs one of the TxDOT employees that worked to install the new sign memorializing Danielle Morgan.
A TxDOT crew works Friday morning to install the new sign in hopes of curtailing drunk driving.
Leo Morgan, along with his mother Linda places flowers in remembrance of Danielle Morgan.
LIBERTY - A mother that lost her daughter in a tragic accident involving a drunk driver last summer is hoping to bring attention to the dangers of driving while intoxicated.
Shortly after midnight on Saturday, July 16, 2022, Danielle Morgan, 30, and her boyfriend Hunter Poole, 27, were killed in an accident on US HWY 90 in the river bottoms just west of the Trinity River.
On Friday morning, as Morgan’s mother, Linda Morgan, brother Leo Morgan and close friend Shanina Edwards looked on, crews with TxDOT installed a sign asking drivers to please not drink and drive while memorializing the tragic loss of Morgan.
“I want people to be aware of what’s going on, and what a drunk driver can do to a family,” said Linda Morgan.
At the time of the accident, according to Lt. Chip Fairchild with the Liberty Police Department, Tomas Martinez, 47, was driving westbound in his Ford F-150 truck in the eastbound lanes before killing himself, a female passenger in his vehicle, as well as Morgan and Poole.
“Ever since this happened, I’ve been crazy going through the holidays without her and everything. You know she was just precious to me, and it's hard every day to be without her,” she said.
When the incident occurred, Fairchild said witness reports of drivers in two other vehicles saw the vehicle driving the wrong way and were able to avoid a collision, but Morgan, who was driving her Jeep Cherokee, could not avoid the vehicle.
“It was just a very sad deal and traumatizing for everyone that was involved,” said Fairchild at the time.
Toxicology reports did come back with evidence that Martinez was, in fact, intoxicated at the time of the accident.
The family placed flowers and small markers in memory of Morgan and Poole at the foot of the new sign before releasing pink and blue balloons.
“They were just two amazing kids that didn’t deserve this. I just want people to see how it tears people apart having to bury their kids when it’s supposed to be the kids burying the parents,” she said.