Catalina Rivera, Martinez’s mother, said the family misses him deeply.
“He died a very hard death … I don’t know what else to say,” she said, choking up. “… I cry every day, I have his picture on my phone and every time I turn it on I see him.”
Rivera added, “it’s just the matter of the way he died – left there like a dog on the freeway…. I go to bed at night and I just picture him … it’s hard, very hard.”
The number of pedestrian crashes and deaths actually dropped last year, but Albuquerque, and New Mexico as a whole, is still considered one of the most dangerous places for pedestrians – a problem that officials say will take vision, money and a culture shift to solve.