Remembering Aaron: Family of Fort Worth I-35W pileup crash victim looks back, 1 year later

Jane Watson waited for hours inside the Riverside Community Center in Fort Worth, watching as other family members reunited tearfully with loved ones who had been bused over from the wreckage of more than 130 vehicles on Interstate 35W.

She checked her phone again. Her husband’s location app still showed him in the same spot on the highway, his phone unmoved despite the hours that had passed and the calls she kept making.

Video from the crash flowed through social media. Semis knocked on their sides, a torrent of cars smashed into one another and a flood of emergency lights reflecting off the icy pavement.

People trickled out of the crash reunification center. No more were coming.

The worst day

Jane Watson’s house is a tribute to her family, much of it dedicated to her husband. Aaron Watson’s smiling face glows from picture frames on the walls, on shelves and in a larger-than-life portrait above the fireplace.

On a blustery Friday afternoon, Jane gingerly picked up the portrait. She set it in front of her, and Cocoa — the family’s brown and white chihuahua — stood up on the coffee table and stared at the portrait. Cocoa, Jane explained, was really Aaron’s dog. The chihuahua showed up on the family’s driveway in 2019 and, while Jane said their two dachshunds — Gabby and Elizabeth — were already more than enough, Aaron insisted on holding onto Cocoa, just until they found her owner. That night, Cocoa slept in bed with the two of them and that was that.

As Jane held up the portrait, Cocoa’s tail began to wag furiously. The dog stepped closer and leaned toward the smiling face of her owner.

The couple’s wedding album rests on a side table.

“That was the best day of my life,” Jane says, gesturing at the book.

Then, she talks about the worst.

Aaron left for work at about 6 a.m. on Feb. 11, 2021, and never came home. He and Jane normally talked on his way to work, and when he did not pick up his phone, she was worried. She called multiple locations for Jason’s Deli, where Aaron, 45, had worked as a managing partner for 20 years. No one had seen him.

The reunification site at the Riverside Community Center opened at about 9 a.m. for people who were involved in the crash but not injured. Jane Watson and a friend waited there for about three hours, but he was not there either.

Jane and her 19-year-old daughter, Cameron, went home to their two-story house in a Fort Worth suburb. Her son, Westen, 10, was still at school.

“We came home and just waited to hear that he was OK,” Jane said. “And that he just lost his phone in the crash and he just couldn’t get a hold of us. And that he was coming home.”

A friend went to the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office. The friend went back to the Watsons’ house to tell them the news — Aaron was dead.

“And just kind of after that point,” Jane said, “it all just turns into a fog.”

Remembering Aaron Watson

Aaron was one of six people killed in the I-35W pileup crash last year. Icy roads, high speeds and express lanes blocked on each side by concrete barriers created a deadly funnel where more than 130 vehicles barreled into one another. A truck driver who helped pull survivors from the wreckage described the crash as “a genocide of metal.”

Since that day, Aaron’s wife, daughter and son have been stuck.

“We think about that day and kind of get locked into it,” Jane Watson said. “You just keep reliving it. Coming up on a year later, it’s constantly there.”

There is not a day in the Watson household where someone doesn’t bring up something Aaron said or did that made them all laugh, Jane said. He had a laugh that made other people smile, even if they weren’t part of the joke.

“He had one of those deep down belly laughs, and he would laugh the hardest at his own jokes,” she said. “And he would slap the table and just take off with it.”

In training videos for Jason’s Deli, Aaron fills the camera with this laugh during an outtake. His hand comes down on the wooden table and the guffaw erupts from his chest, and off-screen, people can be heard laughing along with him.

Her husband of 18 years used to leave every kitchen cabinet and drawer open when he cooked, Jane said. Every dish would be out, and when he made a meal, the whole place looked like a tornado had been through.

Aaron’s walk itself was filled with personality, she said. Just from watching him, one could see if he was happy, sad or excited.

Now, Jane and her family have found themselves cooking more like Aaron did, leaving cabinet doors wide open. And Westen has started to walk more and more like his father.

A few weeks before the fatal crash, Westen and his father went on what the family called a “stinky boys trip.” They hunted and spent the weekend on a ranch. Westen shot his first buck, and Aaron could not have been prouder.

“I go through different memories and things that come up, and I can’t help but be grateful that we had so many amazing memories, and that Westen had that one-on-one time with his dad,” Jane said. “They were always close, and for that bond to deepen is something that I will be forever grateful for. And I hope Westen can grow up and continue to be grateful for it as well.”

A needless death

Jane uses the word gratitude more and more these days. She’s grateful for those memories, for her friends who helped her in the past year and for her children. But she is also angry.

“Aaron is the love of my life,” she said. “And I only got 20 years with him. And his kids didn’t have nearly enough time with an incredible man.”

After the crash, Jane Watson and her attorneys filed a lawsuit against more than a dozen people, agencies and companies that they allege contributed to the “catastrophic vehicular chain reaction” that caused Aaron’s death. The various tollway operators did not maintain the expressway properly, the suit says, and the companies whose semi trucks were involved in the crash did not ensure their drivers drove safely in the icy conditions. Individual truck drivers are named who, according to the suit, did not pay attention to the road conditions and drove too fast.

Mostly, Jane has left the details of the suit up to her attorneys and put the investigation into the crash out of her mind.

“Losing Aaron was — and is — such a tremendous loss that there’s no room for anything else to come in,” she said.

But she does feel that there was time and opportunity for the roads to be treated properly to prevent the roadway of ice on the southbound TEXPress lanes between Northside Drive and 28th Street. North Tarrant Express Mobility Partners is responsible for the upkeep of toll and non-toll lanes at the site of the crash, and according to a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board, the company had not treated the road for nearly two days. Forty-four hours before the crash, the company applied an anti-icing brine solution, which the company said it believed should still have been working when the crash happened.

In the predawn hours of Feb. 11, witnesses on northbound I-35W in the same area reported that a sheet of black ice had formed on the road.

Jane Watson said her husband was “needlessly killed” because the road was not treated properly.

“And that’s really where it ends for me,” she said. “It shouldn’t have happened.”