What happened to Gabriel Valdez? Teenage soldier killed in mysterious KC crash
Gabriel Valdez was one of the good ones.
When his friend Briana Quye switched from public school to home school, many in the 17-year-old’s social circle fell out of touch. But not Valdez.
He stuck around, and the two Independence teens, Briana and Valdez, became fast friends the summer after his senior year at William Chrisman High School. They often went to Moonlight Movies, then walked and talked around Independence Square.
“He could take your mood from being sad to happy because he just said the funniest things ever,” Briana said. “He was a happy person, like all the time.”
Kansas City police are investigating Valdez’s death after he was thrown from the bed of a pickup truck on July 23 near Mark L. McHenry Park.
It had been just more than a year since Valdez graduated high school. In the time since, he’d enlisted in the Army National Guard, completed basic training and worked part-time at a construction cleanup company.
Police, who learned of Valdez’s death more than a week after it happened, are working to find out exactly what happened to the young soldier.
“[V]aldez was riding in the back of a pick-up truck about 3 a.m. July 23 ... when he was ejected. No one ever called police. Someone dropped him off at the hospital,” police said Monday on Twitter.
Now, as an investigation into the crash is underway, police ask that anyone who witnessed the crash or was in the area at the time call Detective Richardson at 816-482-8192.
Briana learned of her friend’s injuries and later his death from Facebook.
“I really just wanted to get ahold of him, but what are you going to do when somebody’s in a coma besides pray?” she asked. “He was just so young. It’s not fair.”
The friends met in an introduction to theater and design class.
“He was always a talkative, loud, funny kid,” Briana recalled. “Everybody talked to him in the class, even if you were shy.”
Valdez worked as a night stocker at Lowe’s after he graduated. When his car broke down and he needed some extra money, Briana suggested he work for her mom’s company cleaning up construction sites.
Briana’s mother, Renee Turner, met Valdez at Starbucks for a little interview. He’d never been to the chain coffee shop before, so she ordered him what she always gets her 9-year-old son: a dragonfruit refresher.
The 44-year-old said while she doesn’t usually hire workers as young as Valdez, he proved to be small, but strong, with an impressive work ethic. And he didn’t shy away from what she described to him as a “dirty, thankless job.”
“A lot of these kids today won’t talk to an adult, and he had no problem doing that,” Turner said. “He’d share everything. His family history, his dreams of the military.”
He left for basic training in Fort Benning, Georgia, later that year. In letters to Briana, Turner painted a picture of his daily routine.
He went to bed late and got up early. Meals were eaten quickly. Once, they were gassed as part of the training. It was one of the worst parts, he told her. But he pushed on.
“He just really wanted to fight for our country,” Briana said.
Valdez also wanted a family. He dreamed aloud of having a big house with a wife and children some day. He just wanted to be happy, she added.
Turner recalled the smart, goofy comments her daughter’s friend used to make. How he liked to sit in the backseat on their way to work and sing as if no one else was around.
Briana remembered how he loved to go on car rides. And how much he loved the song Blueberry Faygo by Lil Mosey.
“He would always be so happy when I turned it on,” she added.
When Valdez met someone knew, he greeted them with a hug instead of a handshake, said his mother, Jennifer Maldonado, who lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
“He was just a light,” Maldonado, 39, said of her son, who spent most of his childhood living with his grandparents in Independence.
When he returned from basic training, Valdez asked Maldonado if she would pay for him to get a tattoo.
Valdez, who had met other Hispanic soldiers his age at basic training, wanted to get a rosary inked across his forearm. Though Maldonado said no, she had a sense of what his new friends meant to him.
Many of them have reached out to her since his death.
She hopes the person who drove her oldest child to the hospital comes forward and gives them answers.
This story was originally published August 6, 2020 at 2:41 PM.
