The halls of A.C. Jones High School were quiet this week as students went from class to class. Their thoughts were of their fellow sophomore schoolmates who died in a car crash Friday night.

“The halls are very quiet. It is a lot of quiet tears,” said Principal Jaime Rodriguez.

Two tributes were put up in the atrium of the high school for Mariano Virata and Reagan Hardy.

Beside each one, faculty and students placed treasured mementos.

Written in black letters on white paper, a simple poem stands behind the wreaths and photos of the boys.

“He was quiet and shy

But was quite a guy.

His smile was bright

It shone brightly on that dark night.”

The wreck

The two teens were killed and three others injured late Friday night when the car they were in rolled and crashed into a utility pole alongside Farm-to-Market Road 888.

Mariano and Reagan were pronounced dead at the scene just before midnight, according to a report filed by Highway Patrol Trooper Jazmin Garcia of George West.

One passenger in the vehicle, 16-year-old Bethany Bernal, was still in the Intensive Care Unit Tuesday at Christus Spohn Memorial Hospital in Corpus Christi with head injuries.

The driver, 16-year-old Christian Morón, and another passenger, 15-year-old Brandon Jimenez were taken to University Hospital in San Antonio with scrapes and bruises. A DPS report listed Morón as 18 years old but faculty and students said he was 16.

Shon Jimenez said that his son, Brandon, told him they were headed to Bethany’s house to hang out that night.

“Evidently it was a narrow road so they were driving down the middle,” Jimenez said. “They came to a bend in the road and another car was coming in the opposite direction.”

Christian pulled back into his lane but over corrected in the process, according to a report filed by the Department of Public Safety.

Witnesses said the Pontiac swerved into the southbound lane, lost control, rolled and struck a utility pole and a property fence, according to the trooper’s report. The vehicle came to rest upside down.

Brandon was the first to pull himself from the wreckage.

He called to the people inside the car.

“There was just silence,” Jimenez said.

“He was telling them to get out but no one would respond back...

“That is when he saw one of the other kids outside of the vehicle — he was ejected.”

Seconds later, the car that had just passed by returned.

Brandon flagged them down and asked for help.

Help was on the way.

But for Mariano and Reagan it was too late.

Mariano and Reagan

“They were both good kids,” said Rodriguez. “Both of them were well liked by the student body.”

He recalls both students greeting him with a wave and friendly “good morning” when he would pass them in the hall.

Rodriguez described Reagan as deeply spiritual.

“He was very close to God,” the principal said.

Coach Troy Moses remembers Mariano as one of those athletes that gave it his all.

“He was on our JV football team last year as a sophomore,” Moses said. This season, Mariano was on the soccer team and had played a game earlier on Friday.

“He was one of those kids you never had to worry about,” Moses said. “He was one of those kids who would never talk back to a coach.

“If you asked him to do something, he was going to do it to the best of his ability.”

Moses said that they cancelled the weekend games but planned to play Tuesday night.

“Saturday was a shock so we let the kids go home,” Moses said. “Right now it is good for the kids to get out there and play and get their minds off (the tragedy.)”

Superintendent Dr. John Hardwick Jr. said that on Monday, grief councilors and members of the Ministerial Alliance were at the high school as part of the Grief Response Plan. Councilors, he said, were also going to the classrooms of Mariano and Reagan in case any of the students needed an ear.

Like the others, Mike Mylnar, welding instructor at Jones High, remembers the boys fondly.

“They were good students with good parents,” he simply said.

While both boys were in his welding class, it was Reagan that stood out as a competition level welder.

“He had patterned himself to be a welder,” Mylnar said. “Mariano was more into sports.”

Mylnar described Reagan as the quiet kid in the back of the room who surprised everyone with his ability.

“I was grooming him. He definitely would have been able to be a competitor,” he said. “His dad is a welder and he had dedicated himself to become a welder.”

At the scene

Two blue wreaths and small wooden crosses mark the area were the boys died.

Written in blue letters on the tan crosses were the words, “RIP. We love you.”

Julie Maupin stood beside the crosses looking down — a mourning look upon her face.

“He loved my daughter like a sister,” she said as she thought about the many times Randi Maupin and Mariano would go riding together.

“It has been real hard,” she said echoing the sentiments of so many people in Beeville. “Our little community suffered a great loss.”

Maupin described the wreck as a tragic accident.

“I knew both Reagan and Mariano. Drinking and drugs were not okay with them,” she said. “It was just an accident. Just a horrible accident.”