BELTON, Mo. — One day after a 13-year-old Belton Middle School student was killed in a head-on crash on U.S. 71, his friends and classmates were coping with the devastating news.
"A lot of my classes were spent with him and just yesterday we were all laughing with him, and then today we find out he’s not here anymore," 13-year-old Anna Marie Edmonds said Thursday.
Anna Marie said the teenager, whom police identified on Thursday as Victur Torres of Belton, was her best friend, and she’s still trying to process the loss.
"Still right now, I’m still like, ’oh my gosh, this is happening,’” she said. “I don’t want to believe it.”
Her brother, Payton, also knew Victur, and reality is slowly sinking in.
“I lost someone that I liked a lot,” Payton Edmonds, 14, said.
The two were in the school band together.
"He was like this great hero that everyone liked to look up to because he was so talented and did so many things," Payton said.
Kansas City, Missouri, police said the teen was riding as a passenger in a Dodge Ram traveling southbound on U.S. 71 north of Bannister Road around 9:15 p.m. Wednesday.
A northbound Ford Ranger crossed the median and struck the Dodge Ram head-on, Sgt. Bill Mahoney said.
Rebecca Edmonds, Anna Marie and Payton's mother, said she was trying to comfort her children on Thursday. She said that as a teenager, she also lost one of her classmates suddenly.
"I still remember that day like it was yesterday, finding out and not knowing how to process everything,” Edmonds said. “Walking into the middle school today and seeing all the kids and teacher crying and upset, it just brought back a lot of what we went through."
She said that experience helped her in how to deal with this loss with her two children. Edmonds said she immediately went to the middle school once she heard the news.
"This kind of stuff can happen in a blink of an eye, and life’s too short to have your own little groups,” Edmonds said. “You need to come together and be one.”
Victur was supposed to play in one of the biggest performances at the Belton High School football game Friday. His classmates want to wear headbands to honor him.
The other victims in the crash were expected to survive.
