Deadly DWI crash leaves Rhome woman with lasting scars, broken heart

Emily Pacheco has no memory of the last minutes she shared with her boyfriend, Allan Minyard.

She doesn’t remember riding with Minyard in his mother’s Toyota Corolla early March 7, when a Tarrant County sheriff’s deputy clocked them traveling 95 mph.

She doesn’t recall him losing control and rolling the car into a fenced field off Business U.S. 287 in northwest Fort Worth.

Thrown from the car, Pacheco was found moaning for help while her boyfriend lay dead in the front seat.

She doesn’t remember that either.

“I woke up in the hospital and I went to go sit up and they shoved me back and told me, ‘Be still. You’ve got glass all over you. You were in an accident,’” said Pacheco, 23.

Her last memory with Minyard, she said, was of the couple leaving a Fort Worth pool hall — both too drunk to drive after an evening of drinking beer and taking shots.

“I actually told him that I didn’t want him driving,” Pacheco said. “… I wanted to call his mom and have his sister drive down there so she could drive us home. But he was really wanting to go to his friend’s house and he was stubborn, so I couldn’t stop him.

“He threw the whole ‘If you don’t get in the car, I’m going to leave you,’” Pacheco said. “So I got in the car.”

Blood tests performed at the Tarrant County medical examiner’s office showed Minyard, 23, had a 0.19 blood alcohol level, more than double the legal limit of 0.08. Pacheco said she was told by hospital staff that her own blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit.

Pacheco spent two days in an intensive care unit with five broken ribs, a broken right scapula, several fractured vertebrae, a collapsed lung and a punctured liver. Staples closed a gash in her head and an MRI would later reveal she also tore ligaments in her left knee, which also required recent surgery.

Though still in pain and undergoing physical therapy, Pacheco recently reached out to the Star-Telegram, wanting to share her story so others might learn of the deadly consequences of drinking and driving. She said she’s also planning to speak at area high schools.

“I’ve never really done public speaking, but it’s always comforted me and helped me to talk about the things that I’ve been through,” Pacheco said in a recent interview at the Rhome home where she continues to live with her boyfriend’s mother. “… Hopefully somebody will take my words to heart and not drink and drive and not let their friends drink and drive.”

A budding relationship

Pacheco and Minyard had been together for more than half a year and were already making plans for the future.

“We were talking about getting engaged. He really wanted to have a son. He wanted a little boy named Damien,” Pacheco said.

Pacheco was a junior at Northwest High School in north Fort Worth when she first met Minyard, a senior who sat next to her in math class.

Just friends in high school, they reconnected last year at a mutual friend’s house and began dating in August.

“He loved pool. That was his biggest thing. We would go and play pool all the time together. He taught me how to play,” Pacheco said. “He was just a really kind person. He always cared way more for other people than he cared about himself.”

By September, Pacheco said, she had moved in with Minyard and his mother at their Rhome home.

Though still in their 20s, both Pacheco and Minyard had dealt with their share of heartaches.

Pacheco, recently divorced, was still grieving the loss of her 3-month-old son, Bentley, who had died in November 2011.

“He had cystic fibrosis and he just died in his sleep,” Pacheco said.

Minyard had previously lost his father and stepfather.

“He had been through a lot and so have I,” Pacheco said. “That’s why we got together so well. He was really good at comforting me and helping me through the hard times.”

On the morning of March 6, Minyard’s grandfather passed away and Pacheco said she wanted to do something to help. Minyard insisted on going to his new job at a Pizza Hut, telling her he couldn’t sit around.

While he worked, Pacheco contacted their friends, suggesting they get together that night at the pool hall to cheer up Minyard.

Minyard met the small group after work.

“I cannot hold my alcohol … he knows that. So when he got there, he took my keys. He was like, you’re not driving home,” Pacheco said. “He had already talked to one of the people at the bar who worked there, and said, ‘Can Emily leave her car here all night?’ They said of course.”

They stayed at the pool hall until about 2 a.m. when Minyard said he wanted them to go hang out at a friend’s house before returning home.

The wreck

Tarrant County Deputy Cleburn Eardley was parked in an unlit area, running radar on Business U.S. 287 at Bonds Ranch Road shortly after 2 a.m. when he clocked a southbound car at 95 mph in a 60 mph zone.

Eardley turned on his emergency lights and set off after the car but, despite reaching speeds of up to 112 mph, never caught up. He had turned off his emergency lights to discontinue the pursuit when he noticed a plume of dust and, investigating further, spotted the wrecked Corolla at the intersection of W. Heritage Trace Parkway.

As he radioed for help and waited for other emergency crews to arrive, dash cam video showed Eardley checking on Pacheco as she lay on the ground, urging her not to move and assuring her that EMS was on the way.

He asked her a few questions and was able to determine that they had just left a pool hall and that she had not been driving.

“Why were y’all going so fast?” the deputy asked.

“I don’t know,” she cried out.

Pacheco would later ask a chaplain at Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital to find out which hospital her boyfriend had been taken to and how he was doing.

“He went and it took him maybe 15 minutes to find out that Allan was taken to the medical examiner’s office,” she said.

Pacheco said she initially refused to believe that Minyard was dead and believed it was a case of mistaken identity.

“He had just gotten a job at Pizza Hut and he couldn’t have a beard so he had just shaved,” Pacheco said. “I demanded they bring him in to me so I could verify it was him because I was like, ‘He shaved. It might not be him.’ My mom and grandma were like, ‘Emily, they’re 100 percent sure it was him.’”

‘It’s not worth it’

Hospitalized for a week before being moved to a rehabilitation facility for another week, Pacheco missed her boyfriend’s funeral, his burial in Oklahoma, and her best friend’s wedding.

She also missed a memorial put on by one of Minyard’s friends and later became upset after learning it involved several people drinking to Minyard’s memory, some of whom later drove home.

“The reason why Alan died ultimately is because his grandfather had died, he was mourning, drank too much and then drove,” Pacheco said.

Pacheco said she’s cut ties with friends who she knows through text messages or phone calls are continuing to drink and drive.

“I have gotten snap chats of people drinking beer while they’re driving,” Pacheco said. “I just cut those people [off] because it’s too hard for me to even think of something happening to them.”

Others have cut ties with her, she said.

“Several of his friends have blamed me and I’ve lost a lot of friends because of that. They felt that I could have stopped him,” she said. “… I had at least one person say, ‘I can’t look at you. I can’t hang out with you because I’m mad that you made it and Allan didn’t.’”

Pacheco said she has struggled with her own guilt.

“How is it that I’m here and you’re not?” she wrote March 9 on Facebook. “How did I survive without a seat belt on and going through a windshield and you didn’t. I need you to help me through this. I’m in so much pain and I need you here to hold my hand.”

She said she tries not to let that guilt fester, focusing instead on using her story to educate others.

“We think that we’re invincible when we’re younger,” she said.

“… I want people to take away from my story, it’s not worth it to drink and drive,” she said. “Life is short and in an instant everything can change. It’s just not worth it.”

This story was originally published June 30, 2015 at 10:54 AM with the headline "Deadly DWI crash leaves Rhome woman with lasting scars, broken heart."