Friends, students mourn loss of coach killed in bus crash

Friends and students are mourning the loss of Coach Arcadio “Archie” Duran.

Duran was killed Sunday night after a charter bus he was traveling in, crashed. The bus was carrying student athletes and coaches from EPISD returning from a track meet in Lubbock. Department of Public Safety officials tell Abc-7 a pickup truck was driving in the wrong direction on Highway 62/180 in Hudspeth County when it crashed into the bus. The 51-year-old driver of the pickup truck, Gary Lawson of Hobbs, N.M. also died.

Duran was a son, brother, husband and father to three children.

“He was just one of those coaches that you really liked,” Duran’s friend Juan Hernandez said.

Hernandez tells Abc-7 he knew Duran for more than a decade. When he heard the news this weekend, he was devastated.

“He’s been a good friend, I know his family, I know his mother, and all his brothers and sisters so it was very difficult to hear he had an accident,” Hernandez said.

Duran was a coach at Jefferson High School before moving to Irvin several years ago.

“He decided that he wanted to go back to his alma mater. And teach again and coach again with some of the Irvin people that are there and he decided to make that change and he was very happy,” Hernandez said.

Hernandez says the 48-year-old loved coaching and always put his students first.

“I know he always sacrificed, including going on this trip, one of his daughters was graduating from San Angelo,” Hernandez said.

Aside from teaching social sciences, he coached the boy’s JV basketball team and the track team. Some of his students are still shaken up after Sunday’s crash.

“I heard an explosion and I felt my body move forward and I looked outside and saw a huge fire and I was scared, like oh what just happened,” Jason Webb said.

Webb was inside the charter bus, just seats away from Duran. He says Duran got up to warn the students before the bus was tragically hit.

“He saw the driver coming at the bus and he stood up to tell everyone to hang on,” Webb said.

It’s a warning students say possibly saved their lives and something those who knew him best say he would’ve done in a heartbeat.

“Archie was that type of person that would sacrifice everything for his students and obviously his high school,” Hernandez said.

Services for Duran will begin this Thursday. Visitation will be from 5P.M. to 9P.M. at Kaster-Maxon & Futrell funeral home on Dyer. A vigil will begin at 7P.M. On Friday, a funeral mass be held at 2P.M. at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church on Diana.

A GoFundMe account has been set up to help cover the funeral costs, click HERE to donate.