DALLAS — His mother called him "E" – short for Ethan.
He's the 13-year-old who was killed last April by Dagoberto Castañon in a fatal hit-and-run accident. Castañon was fleeing police when it happened.
"He was my youngest," Sandy Vasquez sobbed as she took the stand at Castañon's sentencing hearing on Tuesday. "Ethan, he was a clown. He always had everyone laughing."
Vasquez has no memory of the accident. She didn't know initially that her son had died. Her husband, Cedar Hill police Sgt. Victor Vasquez, had to tell her the awful news.
Castañon, 26, has pleaded guilty to murder. State District Judge Gracie Lewis will decide his sentence; the possibilities include a term of up to life in prison.
A parade of police officers took the stand to testify about Castañon's criminal history of repeatedly stealing cars, fleeing from police, and running stop signs — which is exactly what happened in the Vasquez case. Castañon was the country illegally at the time, having previously been deported.
Castañon, a convicted felon, was driving a stolen SUV when he fled from police on April 15, 2014.
Highland Park police Officer Mark Donahoe testified that he saw the minivan run a stop sign at the corner of Armstrong and Abbott avenues. The minivan fled from him, at one point jumping the median and driving down the wrong side of Fitzhugh Avenue.
Donahoe testified that he stopped chasing the vehicle when the driver entered a residential neighborhood, but the officer said he continued to try to locate the vehicle.
Donahoe soon came upon the accident at the intersection of Homer Street and Monticello Avenue in Dallas. Castañon had run another stop sign and broadsided the car driven by Sandy Vasquez. She was taking her son to school that morning.
The officer saw Sandy Vasquez slumped over onto the passenger side with a serious head injury.
"She looked pretty bad off," he said.
Initially, he thought only one victim was in the car. Then he lifted up an air bag and saw Ethan in the back seat.
"He appeared to be lifeless," Donahoe testified.
He pulled him out of the car and tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate him.
Medical examiner Tracy Dyer testified about the extent of Ethan's injuries. She said Ethan's head had separated from his spine. His heart detached from his chest cavity.
"These were severe, lethal injuries," Dyer said. "There was no hope of recovery."
Castañon's girlfriend, Cinthia Medina, testified that he told her he had been in a car accident and that he had been robbed. She said he then made the sudden decision to leave town with her, one of his friends, the friend's girlfriend, and her father. They went to Florida because he said he could get work there.
Days later, U.S. Marshals arrested Castañon in Fort Myers, Florida. The friend — who was in the stolen minivan at the time of the accident — was also arrested. Charges were later dropped against him.
Authorities found what they described as "burglary tools" inside the car, as well as an assault rifle that had been taken in a burglary on the same day as the accident.
Ethan's father, Victor Vasquez, testified about the family's overwhelming sense of loss.
He described the adventuresome little boy with a love of learning. Ethan was in the seventh grade at a Dallas Independent School District magnet school for gifted students.
The Vasquez' had children from prior marriages. Ethan was their only child together.
"We were a blended family," Victor Vasquez said. "Ethan was the glue that bound us ... we all loved him very much."
On the morning of the accident, he said a supervisor told him there had been a crash involving his wife. He knew it was bad when the supervisor didn't mention his son.
He arrived at the hospital at the hospital to find his wife covered in blood.
"She's incoherent," he said. "She's got massive head injuries."
He said he asked the doctor where his son was.
"The doc said, 'He didn't make it,'" he recalled.
In the days that followed, Vasquez repeatedly had to tell his wife that their son had died.
"I had to tell her every day, because she wouldn't remember that we had lost her son," he said. "She would wake up and ask and start putting things together, and then I'd have to tell her again. I had to watch her fall apart again for seven or eight days. "
Vasquez says they will never get over the loss of little "E."
"It's changed the very essence of life for us that nobody can replace," he said.
Castañon is scheduled to take the stand on Wednesday, at which time he is expected to offer an apology to the family of little Ethan Vasquez.
