The family of one of two men killed in a garbage truck crash Friday is remembering a life that was cut far too short,
26 year old Pierre Neal was supposed to get married in less than a year. "He went to work like he does every morning, but I never thought it would be the last time that I would see him leave for work, and this time, not come back," said Eboni Brooks, Neal's fiancée.
Neal and 55-year-old Rogelio Sanchez Marin were driving a garbage truck near 204th and Fort in Elkhorn Friday afternoon. The Nebraska State Patrol said they tried to pass a pickup trailer. The truck rolled over and slid into a dump truck.
The two men were pronounced dead at the scene. "It really hit me real had and I just couldn't hold myself," Pierre Hodges told 6 News.
He was in North Dakota when he got the call that his son had died. They were words he never thought he would hear.
"It's like a part of you has been taken out of your heart or ripped out of your stomach or something. It's unbearable. It's an uncontrollable feeling when you have somebody pass away like that," Hodges told 6 News.
Neal and Brooks were high school sweethearts. They met at Omaha Central. "We started dating. I was in the ninth grade, he was in the 10th grade," Brooks told 6 News.
They had been together for 11 years and raised two little girls. Their wedding date was set for next summer. "He's a good man and a good father. He's been working hard to support me through nursing school and so I graduate in December and I wouldn't have been able to make it through nursing school without him," Brooks said through tears.
Neal's father drove 10 hours to be in Omaha with family and get funeral arrangements in order.