SAN ANTONIO – A man who witnessed his friend's fatal motorcycle crash on Christmas night is challenging what police are reporting.
San Antonio police said John Guevara, 24, was riding his motorcycle when he struck a vehicle trying to turn right at the intersection of West Martin and Northwest 19th streets.They said he was driving at a high rate of speed, but one of his closest friends, who saw the entire crash, said that was not the case.
Mike Gonzalez was hanging out with Guevara at his mom’s home on West Martin Street.
“I remember he said he would be right back,” Gonzalez said. “When I looked, I saw the other car was in the left lane of the road, and John was in the right lane. That car was trying to turn right from that lane, which is illegal, and didn’t have his signal light on, and that is when John hit him.”
Gonzalez said he immediately ran to Guevara’s side.
“I tried running and holding onto him, and I told him to wake up, and he wouldn’t wake up at all,” Gonzalez said. “I just knew I was losing a friend. He was more like a brother. He was always there when I needed something and always helping me. Nothing is going to be the same. I can’t sleep at night, just replaying everything that happened.”
Guevara’s three older sisters are just as devastated.
“I just saw him yesterday,” said Veronica Guevara, his sister. “He gave me a hug, and it was different kind of hug. And I told him, ‘Hey, brother, I love you.’ I told him I loved him, and I didn’t know that was going to be last time that I would be able to do that.”
They said everything was like a normal Christmas holiday before the crash.
“We were together Christmas Eve,” said Jeanette Guevara, John Guevara's sister. “We were all together playing, dancing and opening gifts. It was great.”
The family wants people to know how good of a man John Guevara was.
“He had so many friends. He put so many before himself in so many ways. He always found a way to get us all together for a cookout, and then (he) would tell us not to touch the grill, because he thought he was the best," Veronica Guevara said. "He was just always happy and in such a great mood. Just being around him just made you really happy and feel very loved.”
Erika Kross, John Guevara's oldest sister who was like a second mother to him, said she still cannot believe what is happening.
“Growing up, we would just tease him,” Kross said. “We would call him Poochie, and poochie in Spanish is stinky ... Sometimes, I would call him that in front of his friends by accident, and they would all laugh until they understood that was his nickname. He was just a great man. He was our baby brother and will be missed by so many people.”
The family said John Guevara was also very giving.
“He just held a toy drive at his job, where they packed a truck full of toys for neighborhood kids,” Kross said.
Jeanette Guevara, who was the closest in age to John Guevara, worked with him.
“It was a love and hate relationship, but he was my best friend. We did everything together. We always talked. He would call me so much. I remember when we were younger, we shared the same room, and I would be afraid of the dark, and he would break my night lights so I would have to go into the living room and get the big lamps," Jeanette Guevara said.
The family said John Guevara was very successful for his age.
“He worked his way up in Performance Wheel and Tires,” Veronica Guevara said. “He was so humble and down to earth, but he was very successful. He started as a shop tech and ended up being the general manager. He reached his goals pretty quickly.”
They said his genuineness leaked into his workplace because he was passionate not only about his work family, but about any kind of motor vehicles.
“Customers would go in, and he would get them really good deals and tried to help them out as much as he could, because he loved it, and he wanted everyone else to love it as much as he did,” Jeanette Guevara said. “People would get stranded, and he was always on the road trying to help them.”
John Guevara is leaving behind his 5-year-old daughter.
“He worked so hard, and everything he did, he did for his daughter,” Jeanette Guevara said. “She was his world, everything to him ... Because we lost our dad when we were young, he didn’t want her to grow up like that.”
Now his family wants to raise awareness about motorcycles on the roadway.
“You know, people don’t look,” Jeanette Guevara said. “They just drive like motorcycles are not even there."
“People need to be more careful,” Gonzalez said. “Police are saying he was speeding, and I know he loved to speed, but not recklessly. In that moment, he was not speeding. You can only go so fast when you are driving just a couple houses down the road from where he was cut off.”
“John was really good about being safe,” Kross said. “He would always wear his helmet and be very careful on the roads.”
“Be careful and look twice. Share the road, because that person was loved by someone else," Veronica Guevara said.
The family plans to hold a candlelight vigil at a memorial set up at the intersection where the crash happened at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday. They said they are still trying to raise money and make funeral arrangements.
No charges have been filed against the driver of the vehicle.
