‘Mom, it hurts.’ Kansas mother heartbroken by daughter’s final words in texting crash

Jacque Tierce remembers hearing the sirens at about 8 a.m. and praying for whoever was involved in an emergency.

Then, a few minutes later, she remembers getting a message from her daughter’s coworker, Tierce wrote in a blog post for the Kansas Department of Transportation. Her daughter, 22-year-old Danielle Delgado Garcia, was late for work — something that never happened.

Moments later, Tierce found out Danielle had made daycare plans for her son, Jayce, so that she could go to work at about 7:30 a.m. on May 26. Jayce’s other grandma was picking him up before Danielle left home, Tierce wrote in the KDOT blog post.

That’s when Tierce said she knew those sirens were for her daughter, she wrote.

She remembers getting a phone call from Danielle’s phone a few minutes later, the post says.

“I answered, knowing it would not be Danielle’s voice on the other line,” Tierce wrote.

She was right. It was a trooper with the Kansas Highway Patrol using the phone, she said.

Just before 8 a.m. that day, Danielle was in a crash, the Hays Post reported. Danielle was driving eastbound on U.S. 56 in Larned when her Chevy rear-ended a semi that was turning right, according to a crash report obtained by the Post.

Danielle was taken to a local hospital before she was airlifted to a Wichita hospital, Tierce wrote.

Right before she was airlifted, though, Tierce had the opportunity to talk with her daughter.

“Mom, it hurts so bad Mom. My stomach hurt so bad.”

Those were Danielle’s last words, Tierce told The Wichita Eagle via Facebook.

“I got to tell her I loved her and squeeze her hand before she went out again and was loaded into the helicopter,” Tierce told KDOT.

Her daughter died that same day while in a Wichita hospital, KAKE reported.

“The nights are the worst,” Tierce told KAKE. “When you have time to think about the last conversation I had with her.”

Tierce later learned that her daughter had been texting via Snapchat when she crashed, she told KDOT.

“All because of texting while driving, a 22-year-old’s life is cut short,” KDOT tweeted, “a son loses his mom and a mom loses her daughter.”

Less than two weeks after her daughter’s death, Tierce started a campaign to encourage people to stop texting while driving — #doitfordanielle.

She told The Eagle she wants to raise awareness by sharing her daughter’s story.

“No text message, facebook post, or snapchat is worth a life,” the campaign photo says. “Please put your phone up while you are driving.”

“I don’t want anyone to go through this,” Tierce told KAKE. “Not any mother, not any brother, not any sister, not any son, child. Not any friend.”

From 2011 to 2016, 31 people died and 1,461 people were injured in Kansas crashes involving a cell phone, according to KDOT data.

In just 2016, 3,450 across the U.S. were killed in crashes involving distracted drivers, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

“Texting is the most alarming distraction,” according to the NHTSA. “Sending or reading a text takes your eyes off the road for 5 seconds. At 55 mph, that’s like driving the length of an entire football field with your eyes closed.”

This story was originally published September 19, 2018 at 1:12 PM.