Lubbock Marine in ICU after motorcycle crash

LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) - Ricardo Sanchez is in the ICU after suffering brain injuries in a motorcycle crash on Saturday, and his family is asking for your help.

Sanchez served as a Marine for five years. His mother, Linda Casares, said when he joined the Marines, she had no idea. She found out when they were going to the mall and his Sargent stopped them.

“I looked over there and he looked at me. Oh, mom I just want to tell you, we’ll talk about it when we get back but I joined the Marines,” Casares said. “And I’m like, son why didn’t you tell me before, he goes, Mom, I knew you were going to react but this is what I want and I’m like okay.”

Sanchez started in California and then traveled around the world as an aircraft mechanic.

“He made sure the airplanes were always on the go. If something went wrong, he was always there to fix them. He loved his job,” his mother said.

Sanchez was later discharged for medical reasons.

Casares and Sanchez have lived in Lubbock for 15 years now. Sanchez has a 10-year-old son named Aiden. Aiden Sanchez is in 5th grade now and the family has been trying to get him ready for back to school.

With school around the corner, Sanchez was trying to get things in order for their family.

”He was about to get a job, he was gonna get married, he had his fiancé, they went to go look for a house, and that’s when he got into this accident. And we’ve just hit rock bottom,” Casares said.

This is not the first accident Sanchez has been in. In May, he was on the way to his grandmother’s funeral when he hit a curb and lost control.

His mother said he was wearing his helmet at that time, and was able to walk away from the crash with only bumps and bruises. Unfortunately, this was not the case for his accident on Aug. 6.

“He was going to go see a house that he was going to rent out for his family. Right there where he was going to turn, something happened that he lost control and he was not wearing a helmet,” Casares said.

She said fortunately, someone saw the crash when it happened and called 911.

“Soon as they got him they brought him in. He had head trauma, soon as he got into the hospital he went straight to the ER. He had an operation on his brain, they had to take part of his skull out,” Casares said.

Sanchez suffered a brain bleed and had to undergo two brain surgeries.

Doctors told her it takes a long time to recover from brain trauma.

“We just gotta take it hour by hour, day by day. Right now it’s steady but it’s going to be a long process,” she said.

The family is now doing everything they can to make sure Sanchez and his son are taken care of. When Sanchez wakes up, he will be in the care of his mother.

“We’re just going to go ahead and pull him out of his house because he can’t pay the rent and the house is going to be sitting there by itself, so we’re just going to go ahead and move him out,” Casares said.

For now, all his family can do is stand by his side.

“I gotta be with my boy. This is my son, this is my baby boy. He needs me, I need him, and that’s why I’m here.”

If you would like to contribute to Ricardo Sanchez’s recovery his family provided a GoFundMe link and a Meal Train link.

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