MIDLAND, LA — On a night communities around the world came together to ring in the new year, the small town of Midland, Louisiana, gathered to mourn.
19-years-old’s Kylan Mier and Dante Lacomb both died in a single-vehicle car crash Sunday while taking exit 76 on I-10 westbound. Authorities say Mier’s car veered off the roadway and struck the highway 91 bridge embankment. Lacomb was not wearing a seatbelt, and officials believe speeding may have been a factor.
“Anything can happen,” warned Lacomb’s close friend, Braxton Duhon. “Wear your seatbelts. Watch the speed limit cause it’s not just him that’s gone he takes a lot with us. He’s still here, but it won’t be the same.”
Hundreds of people came out to remember both teenagers and the impact they had on their family, friends, school, and town. Many of them said Mier and Lacomb’s deaths didn’t truly sink in until they celebrated their lives Tuesday night.
Both young men graduated from Midland High School in May. Their classmates organized a vigil so that they would be remembered not for how they died, but how they lived.
“They made a good duo together. One being shy and the other being energetic,” Braydon Badeaux, said a close friend who helped organize the vigil. “
They evened each other out,” added Ella Huval, who first thought to honor Mier and Lacomb in with a public candlelight vigil.
Each friend remembered Dante Lacomb as the life of the party, infamous for his dance moves and Kylan Mier as a trusted friend who always listened when you were down and out.
“Dante had a lot of friends as you can see here tonight,” Lacomb’s older sister, Breana Larry, said. “Dante had a lot of loved ones, Dante and Kylan. They were both loved by a lot of people.”
Perhaps no one loved either more than Kylan’s fiance. He proposed four days before his death to his love and mother of his nine-month-old son he left behind.
“I hope he grows up to be just like his dad,” Kylan Mier’s fiance, Elise Schaefer, said about their son, Declan Mier. “His dad was such a great person. I hope he lives on through him.”
Both Mier and Lacomb’s friends and family said the vigil started as an idea, but the full community came together from donating the venue, security, and candles to make the vigil a reality.
Funeral services for both young men will be held Thursday at 1:00 P.M. at St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church. Visitation will be held from 9:00 A.M. to 12:30 P.M. at Gessey-Ferguson Funeral Home in Crowley.
