Johana Lopez asked her son not to go out that night.
On Saturday, Nov. 8, 17-year-old Julio Lopez wanted to attend a quinceañera, a traditional Latin American celebration of a girl’s 15th birthday, with some of his friends.
“Kids should listen to their parents,” Johana Lopez said in Spanish through her tears. “Because when I told him not to go out, it wasn’t because I was a bad parent, but because you want to prevent this. I wanted to avoid this pain.”
Her son left nonetheless. On the return trip home, a tragic crash took his life and the lives of Enrique Rodriguez Sabas, 17, and Leyner Velasquez, 13, upending a tight-knit immigrant community already enduring immigration raids that are splitting up families.
All three were passengers in a pickup truck when the driver, also 17, failed to negotiate a curb and struck a tree.
“The entire community of Apopka is mourning,” said Yesica Ramirez, the general coordinator with the Farmworker Association of Florida.
Family and friends of Julio Lopez, Enrique Rodriguez Sabas, and Leyner Velasquez —the three teens killed in a crash in Apopka Sunday— grieve during a candlelight vigil at the crash site on Welch Road, Monday night, Nov. 10, 2025. The students attended Apopka High School and Kelly Park School. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
Apopka, home to one of the state’s largest communities of farmworkers, has been a major target of Immigration and Customs Enforcement since President Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration began early this year, she said, leading families there to cement a stronger bond than before.
“The sense of unity and empathy has grown more and more because they’re attacking us a thousand different ways, and now with these losses it has more impact,” Ramirez said.
The family of Leyner Velasquez, the youngest victim, was already reeling from a traffic stop in January that led to his father’s arrest and a three-month detention by ICE.
Leyner’s father was released in March on recognizance, a process that allows immigrants to await hearings on their case outside of detention based on their promise to appear at all future court hearings and follow other conditions.
“Leyner’s father said to me, ‘I only got to enjoy my son for six or seven months after I got out of jail and now I will never see him again,’” Ramirez said.
While his dad was in jail, Leyner helped support the family, working alongside his mother in various agricultural jobs. He took up his dad’s role as caretaker, checking for air in the family’s car tires and filling up gas tanks, Ramirez said.
“The family was distraught at that moment because they didn’t know if they would let him stay in the country or not,” Ramirez said.
At a vigil on Monday night, roughly a hundred community members gathered at the site of the crash to light candles and tie red and black balloons, Julio’s favorite colors, to the tree where the crash occurred. Family, friends and fellow students hugged and cried over the candles, flowers and photos of the three boys at the base of the tree for hours on an evening with record-breaking cold.
Family and friends of Julio Lopez, Enrique Rodriguez Sabas, and Leyner Velasquez —the three teens killed in a crash in Apopka Sunday— grieve during a candlelight vigil, background, at the crash site on Welch Road, Monday night, Nov. 10, 2025. The students attended Apopka High School and Kelly Park School. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
Lydiani Cruz, a junior at Apopka High School, grew up four doors down from Enrique in the same trailer park neighborhood. But the two were more like cousins, she said.
“He was such an amazing being, he was so sweet and kind and no one ever really saw him when he was down,” Cruz said. “We used to always play volleyball together, me, him and his older brother.”
Cruz said her intuition told her something bad had happened when she drove by Enrique’s house on her way to work on Sunday and saw his family standing outside wearing all black. She found out about the accident just an hour later via a phone call from her mother.
“I just started crying an hour into work and had to clock out, I just couldn’t do it,” Cruz said. “I was so upset and it got to a point where I just felt numb, like I couldn’t cry anymore.”
Cruz said Enrique’s family has endured heartbreak before. The family lost their father and 17-year-old daughter in a car accident a few years ago. Now Enrique, who was also 17, is gone.
he funeral for Leyner Velasquez and Julio Lopez is livestreamed at St. Patrick Catholic Church in Mount Dora on Friday, Nov. 14, 2025. (St. Patrick Catholic Church)
On Friday, over 200 people, all sporting red and black, packed St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Mount Dora for the boys’ funeral service. Most were young high school students and friends of the three boys, some wearing t-shirts that read “Rest in Peace Julio” with a photo of him in the center.
During the hour-long Spanish-only service, many in the crowd wiped tears from their eyes as Father Gianni Agostinelli spoke to the crowd.
“The world was better because of them,” Agostinelli said. “Look at how many people are here today. They were a treasure that was robbed … but they are now in the hands of God.”
After the service, the crowd followed the coffins of the boys out of the church. Alongside the coffin of her son, Johanna Lopez shouted, “Why Julio?” as she wept. Leyner’s father buried his face in his hands as he cried.
The accident occurred just before 2 a.m. on Sunday, Nov. 9, when a 2020 Chevrolet Silverado driven by a 17-year-old boy from Apopka was traveling eastbound on Welch Road approaching Wekiwa Drive, the Florida Highway Patrol said. The boy lost control of the vehicle while negotiating a curve and the pickup ran off the roadway, struck a tree and overturned.
FHP said the driver and two passengers, a 15-year old boy and a 14-year-old boy, were transported to area hospitals with serious, but non-life-threatening injuries. The three other passengers died as a result of crash injuries, one pronounced dead at Advent Health Apopka and two others pronounced dead at the scene.
The FHP report said only the driver and one of the deceased 17-year-olds were wearing seatbelts.
In a statement to the Orlando Sentinel, FHP said the investigation is ongoing. Investigators are still determining if speed was a factor and are waiting for blood evidence to determine “if impairment was a factor,” the agency said. A decision about any charges “will not be made until the entire traffic homicide investigation is complete” the agency added.
Ramirez said the community must support the survivors. All three families have a GoFundMe set up to pay for funeral expenses, burial costs and helping the three families.
“You are never prepared for a death, especially in our culture where we don’t speak about how to economically prepare for a death,” Ramirez said. “When a family member dies, money shouldn’t be a concern for how to bury my child.”
For Johana Lopez, the loss of her son leaves a huge hole in her heart.
“He was my baby,” Lopez said. “He was my world.”
