Family grieving over death of EPCC student

The ABC-7 newsroom learned a 19-year-old El Paso Community College student was killed in a deadly crash on Monday.

She was on her way to the Valle Verde campus in the Lower Valley with other EPCC students. The car crash happened near Diana and Gateway South in the Northeast.

Jackie Hager’s family told ABC-7 she loved to draw anime and participate in the performance art Cosplay or Costume Play. She recently graduated — top 10-percent — from Andress High and was well on her way to accomplishing her dream of becoming a marine biologist.

That was before yesterday’s fateful crash in which she was killed instantly.

“I’m going to miss everything about her, everything,” said Jackie’s mother, Cecy Ortega. “I went to her room to tell her good morning today.”

Ortega was in tears over the death of her daughter. Hager was one of four EPCC students in a 2002 green Grand Am that stalled on the U.S. 54 access road Monday afternoon.

“She was such a good girl,” Ortega said, “just such a good girl.”

After pushing the car to the side, the students got back in the car to wait for a tow truck. But before it arrived, they were hit from behind by the driver of a pick-up.

“She was gorgeous,” Ortega said. “She loved anime and she was so involved in cosplay and recently she taught herself to sew so she could make her own cosplay costumes. I never had to worry about Jackie. She never gave me any problems. She was my baby.”

“I’m going to miss her so much,” her brother, Joey Hager, 23, said. “She was just so amazing. She was so smart. She was going to do something. She was going to be so much better than any of us.”

He had this to say about the accident and the driver of the truck, 52-year-old El Pasoan Craig Lewis.

“I don’t know why it happened,” Hager said. “I don’t know what he was doing, why he didn’t notice that they were stopped, why he couldn’t move over? There’s a lot of questions, but I’m not mad at him. I feel bad for him because he has to live with this.”

Lewis was also released from the hospital. Police say they do not believe any charges will be filed against him, but the crash investigation remains open.

Students held a memorial for Jackie Hager at EPCC’s Trans Mountain campus on Tuesday evening.