COPPERAS COVE, Texas — A close friend of the victims in a deadly wrong-way crash last Saturday on Interstate 14 is asking for the public's help.
Ashley Ball started a GoFundMe page to help one of the surviving victims, Autumn Lynch, pay for medical bills. She told 6 News, if possible, she hopes the fund could help the families of Joshua Smith and Aaliya Peinado, the two who died in the crash.
On Saturday, July 16, Matthew Fernandez, 22, was reportedly driving eastbound on the westbound side of I-14 and struck their vehicle, Texas DPS said.
Smith and Peinado died at the scene, but Lynch survived with critical injuries. She was transported to the hospital, DPS said.
"I don't know how much money this GoFundMe will make," Ball said. "If we make enough, I would love, and I talked about it with Autumn, to share it with everybody who was involved."
The page has raised over $2,400 since the weekend with a goal of $10,000 to hopefully cover medical expenses for Lynch.
Ball says this tragedy is unfair.
"When I first saw Autumn in the hospital, I cried," Ball said. "It's just really sad to see such a good person go through something that she wasn't even in the wrong for."
But she insists that anything will help. Money, condolences, love will all go a long way, she said.
"If you can't pay for it, totally understandable; hard times for everybody. If you could just share it or tell people about it, give your condolences and just what any kind person would do in a situation like this as if they were your own people."
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