GARDENDALE, Texas — Last week, a car wreck in Gardendale involved multiple passengers.
One boy, Aycen Garcia, was sent to the hospital due to his wounds, but he survived and is recovering.
Unfortunately, his brothers Axell and Argen lost their lives in the crash.
The boys frequented the Gorilla Heavy Hitters Boxing Gym, which is owned and operated by Iram Sanchez since 2020.
Axell trained from time to time, but was more interested in horses and roping. Argen, the younger brother, was more of a boxer.
His nickname, Little G, was gifted to him by Sanchez when he first met him.
Both boys, however, would always bring smiles and laughter to everyone they met.
“They are just fun kids, you know, full of energy. Everywhere we would go they were like the light of the room," Sanchez said. "Just amazing kids man. Positive and real respectful kids. You know their parents raised some respectful boys and we were just lucky to be a part of their lives you know.”
The two were known as mischievous pranksters at the gym, but in a way that made people laugh.
Sanchez's memories of the boys are filled with these types of pranks and laughter.
He recalled one story when he made a call to them after a successful match when the boys - who knew him as "Coach" - tried to pull a fast one on Sanchez.
“I called their mom so she could give me his number so I can call them and congratulate him because he had won a fight. So I call him and I guess they answered a little early and you can hear in the background when he got on the phone," Sanchez said. "He's like, 'what's up?' You just had [to] be there.”
Everything changed, however, after the accident.
Sanchez was in Las Vegas at the time, prepping a trainee for a boxing match.
The loss of Axell and Argen brought everything to a standstill.
"It was hard, man. I just had no words to explain. Just silence. We were actually on the road when we got the news and we had to pull over," Sanchez said. We didn't know where we were, we were just in shock."
The accident happened at the intersection of Hollyhock Avenue and Cottonwood Road, an intersection that Sanchez said has always been a bad spot.
“How many fatalities need to happen until they do something about that? It's got to be stopped. The family lives around the corner, and I'm sure they're gonna remember that for the rest of their lives, man," Sanchez said. "We don't want more families having deaths because they don't put a red light or some stoplights or something there.”
From now on, Sanchez and everybody else will continue to honor the life and legacy of Axell and Argen with his work at the boxing gym.
One of the GHH fighters has an upcoming fight in Las Vegas on July 13th, where they plan to dedicate the match to the memory of the boys.