Mother Depicts Grief Over Son Killed in December Car Crash

Ruth Ruiz gripped a red Sharpie and quietly penned the words “WHY?!?” and “NO!” on the lips of a white plastic mask laying before her on a table filled with glue, pieces of ribbon and bits of construction paper.

“Those were the two things—all I could think of when they told me,” Ruiz said.

Next to her, Ruiz’s sister carefully wrote the words “don’t drink & drive” on the cheeks and forehead of her own mask, blacking the lips with permanent marker and drawing on straight lashes above the eye holes.

Simplistic, clear, repetitive, her mask was done.

The two women worked quietly in a small room set up at the Crisis Intervention Unit (CIU) office on Wednesday afternoon, the first to arrive at an art showcase the CIU was hosting in honor of National Crime Victim’s Rights Week.

Dressed in a black shirt with her son’s name printed on the front in blue lettering, Ruiz faintly smiled as she acknowledged the Ram Powerlifting tee the club had started selling after her son, Aaron James Allen, was killed in a car crash on Dec. 6.

She, along with countless others, became acquainted with the volunteers at the CIU after facing tragedy, and with tears in her eyes she explained how the team had supported her when she had no place else to turn.

“I was like—I just felt lost and didn’t know which way to run or which way to go and they were there for me when I didn’t know which way to go,” Ruiz whispered. “Losing a child, I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. You can’t think, you don’t know what to do. You don’t know what you’re supposed to do next. Nothing. You can’t think.”

When the CIU staff steps in, “you have somebody guiding you a little bit,” she said. You can talk to other people who have pain and they understand.

“We’re part of the sheriff’s office and what we do is respond to calls from any law enforcement in Tom Green County to go to the scene of a crime 24/7, work with the victims, whatever the victims need,” explained Rita Guthrie, one of two full-time staffers at the CIU.

Guthrie explained that the team’s concern is to support and counsel the victims, assess their needs and provide referrals to other agencies and organizations within the community that can help them recover and regain control of their lives.

“I think it’s really good to be able to use the things that you’ve gone through, the pain that you’ve gone through to help other people cope with that pain and the process of healing from it. I think it’s important to give back to society,” Guthrie said. “Plus, it helps you.

“I’ve had people tell me that they didn’t think they would be alive if it weren’t for something that we had done. Just knowing that we make a difference in the world, in people suffering. They still may be suffering, but not as much. And when you’re talking about domestic violence, lives are saved.”

Cutting out heart shapes from heavy black construction paper, Ruiz spoke of her son and the life he had, how he was always there to support her, loved life and loved his family.

“My heart is gone,” she repeated as she wrote the sentence on one of the two hearts with black glitter glue. “I am no more,” she wrote on the other. She glued each piece to the forehead of the mask, the prevailing thoughts she has now when she thinks of her son.

“Sometimes I think they took my life away, my only son,” she said softly. “I’m disabled and he helped me all the time. He was going to work, he was going to school. Now I don’t have him. And it’s not just for me, for him, because he deserved to have his life. He had put all this work into it and then it just gets cut off. He doesn’t have his chance at marriage, at kids, at his career, none of those things. Those are all taken from him and he didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve it. He was a great kid.”

Looking at the masks side by side, Guthrie said she wanted to provide survivors an opportunity to participate in an event to know that they’re not forgotten. The masks are frequently used at the Juvenile Justice Center and at the Rape Crisis Center for victims to depict how they felt during the crime and how they felt afterward. Once completed, they will hang for the month of May in the Tom Green County Library downtown.

For their part, Ruiz and her sister want to keep the memory of the 20-year-old Lake View graduate alive, while sending a message to the community about drinking and driving.

While she has not been indicted, Jaime Tankersley was booked for intoxication manslaughter after crashing her truck into Allen’s Civic on Dec. 6, ultimately resulting in his death. Results of a blood draw have not been released, and police say the crash investigation is ongoing.

“Either side of it is hurtful,” Ruiz said in reference to drunk driving. “I lost my son, but for the kids that might do that, you’re going to hurt your parents by putting yourself in that situation. But they’re young. But somebody older, you should know. Either end of it, it’s hard. But people that are older that do it, you should know better.”