Tears from a heartbroken father weeped onto his 22-year-old daughter's hospital bed before her brain-dead body was hauled off to donate organs following a deadly fight with her boyfriend.
Robert Moreno kneeled over his daughter's, Zahriya, body Wednesday after doctors pulled her off life support at Banner University Healthcare in Tuscon, Arizona . More than 100 family, friends and staff watched the young woman's body being wheeled away in a video saturated with bleak emotion. This is what medical professionals call the honor walk.
It wasn't the first emotional blow to Robert as Zahriya's twin brother Izac perished in 2021 from a fiery motorcycle crash. Robert, who is a fire captain, said: "Being as we lost our twins, it’s going to be a lot of darkness in the future and we’re going to push through that as difficult as it is because that’s what our daughter would have wanted for us. I’m devastated."
Scorned boyfriend stabs ex 30 times and then slits her throat for disturbing reason in Ohio
Bodycam shows Arizona dad's bizarre behavior as he yelled 3 bone-chilling words before tot, 2, died in hot car
He added his 22-year-old daughter never really found peace with her brother's death, almost foreshadowing the difficulty he will have recovering from the death of another one of his children. "It’s wonderful to know that parts of my baby will live on, but there’s no words, no anything that will ever be able to make this better."
Zahriya made fatal mistake while engaged in an argument with her 25-year-old boyfriend Angelito Adrian Olivas. Police said she jumped onto the trunk of his vehicle in an attempt to stop him from speeding off—it didn't work. Olivas accelerated the car with his girlfriend still on it, causing her head to hit the pavement.
The young woman was unresponsive, so Olivas sped his girlfriend of a year-and-a-half to a nearby firehouse, before she was taken to the hospital and ultimately pronounced brain dead. "The outpouring of support is something I wouldn't have fathomed in a million years," he said of the honor walk.
"I thought it was just going to be family and friends." The recent graduate from esthetician school was described as a "very strong girl" who was active in JROTC and was was planning in doing it full time. Her boyfriend was handcuffed and charged with one count each of felony domestic violence, aggravated assault and felony endangerment.
Click here to follow the Mirror US on Google News to stay up to date with all the latest news, sports and entertainment stories
He was released later the same day on a $2,500 bond, which had Robert seeing red. "It almost seemed like a joke," he said. "I'm disappointed in the judge, the legal system."
The honor walk ritual, celebrating a life saved by another's choice to donate organs at the time of death, was adopted by US hospitals in 2017. Nurses working in the intensive care unit wanted a way to give thanks to organ donors.
Most Popular
Comments / 0