Veteran killed while helping Texas crash victims had mission to ‘save souls,’ family says
The man who authorities said was killed by a suspected drunk driver while trying to help the victims of a hit-and-run on Saturday was “a server, a helper,” his family said at a news conference Wednesday.
Donald Collins, 25, stopped to help the occupants of a van after it was hit by a red tow truck on Interstate 30 in the early hours of Saturday morning, according to the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office. While the Good Samaritan was there, authorities said, 22-year-old Irma Nelly Martinez-Leal crashed an SUV into him and the already-wrecked van.
The sheriff’s office said Martinez-Leal was driving drunk. She’s been arrested and charged with intoxication manslaughter and two counts of intoxication assault with a vehicle.
Donald Collins — whose wife, Elizabeth Collins, said was a U.S. Marine veteran — was taken to a hospital, where he died. The two people he was trying to help survived, with one of them going to the hospital for injuries that were not life threatening.
Authorities have found with the help of the community the red tow truck the sheriff’s office said fled the scene of the initial accident but have not identified or located the driver.
Elizabeth Collins said at the Wednesday news conference that she doesn’t care as much about the tow truck driver being found as she does making sure people know who her husband was. Donald Collins was the father of a 2-year-old daughter, Nola, and looked for opportunities to go out of his way and help others.
“I’d seen it plenty of times where he would give the clothes off his back to others,” Elizabeth Collins said. “He was loving, caring, never quick to anger.”
Because he was a Marine, Elizabeth Collins said she knew that something was wrong when she woke up at around 3 a.m. and Donald Collins wasn’t at home.
“He did everything like clockwork,” she said at the news conference. He was almost always home by 2:35 a.m. “I woke up at 3:03 and realized that he wasn’t home.”
His father, Donald Collins Sr., echoed what his daughter-in-law said about his son’s generosity.
“He always had that savior mentality,” Donald Collins Sr. said of his son.
Elizabeth Collins said she will miss her husband, but it won’t stop her from living out the goals he had in life.
“I am very sad, because I’m going to miss my best friend,” she said at the news conference. “But missing him is not going to stop what our mission in the world is, which is to save souls, and he did that.”
Donald Collins Sr. said that he and the rest of the family will miss his son, but their “hearts are at peace, because he lived a life that was pleasing to God.”
Elizabeth Collins said that she forgives the woman charged with driving drunk and killing her husband.
“I’m not angry at her,” she said.
A fundraiser has been started for the family through GoFundMe.
