Gone too soon.

Death is imminent. We all know this, yet the only problem is we don’t know when, or how its going to happen to us. To teens and other younger individuals like me, we feel like we’re going to live forever; and that we should’t have to worry about that stuff; even with a mindset like that we still never expect our death. However once it comes to your doorstep, especially if its someone you know and the same age group as you, it hits you hard. Just coming to a realization and it occurring to you that you could’ve been taken away from this earth, it absolutely terrifies you. This is the case when I lost my friend Sean Ryan, or as we all called him “Seany Boy”.

Sean was from Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn New york and he was a high school graduate from Xaverian HS with plans to go to Iona College to major in journalism, he also wrote about sports and his opinion about teams he liked or breaking news in the industry as a hobby, he was a Notre Dame Fighting Irish fan at heart, and most importantly he was someone that everyone knew and cared for and he gave that same love back to his family and friends. Sean always went out with his friends and had great times with them and a good can or two of Natural Light, but one night changed for the worse. Sean was out on Sunday night on Gerritsen Avenue (along the edge of Marine Park) and he was just riding his bike home, at this same time a resident from Bay Ridge named Thomas Groarke was driving his car. Problem was that he was more intoxicated as he possibly could have been, the man blew twice past the legal Blood Alcohol Content limit. From this, he swerved into the other lane, striking Sean without hesitation.

While his situation is tragic and absolutely terrible, I obviously cant make a website about it; even though you can guarantee I will come back to this case soon. Driving under the influence is a serious issue facing most of us because its something we can’t control. In the article by patch.com that speaks about Sean, it states that at least 13 New York City cyclists have been killed by cars so far in 2016, up 130 percent from five cyclists killed by this time last year; whether a percent of those people were under the influence wasn’t said but you can bet there definitely was a person in that group. The most common age group of a drunk driver is 26 to 29 years of age which absolutely blows my mind, you’d think people would be preparing to get their lives together and head into adulthood, guess not. We need to make this stop and invent stricter laws against this to save lives and avoid loosing more loved ones, before we loose another young one.