Mother remembers son after deadly crash, asks community to help other family

LEXINGTON, Ky. (ABC 36 NEWS NOW) — Tifany Perrine, a mother to three boys, received a phone call no parent ever wants to get.

“We got the call at 3:45 from one of my husband’s other officers that we needed to get to the hospital immediately and that is was bad,” she said.

Less than two hours later, her son, 17-year-old Matthew Perrine died in the hospital.

Officials say Matthew and his friend Noah Carbajal were driving down Bryan Station Road Saturday when they were involved in a head-on car crash. Noah remains in the hospital.

Now, Tifany is asking the community to help the other families involved in the crash as she grieves and remembers her teenage son.

“Matthew used to love to draw, he would laugh, his laugh was so contagious, his smile,” she recalls.

Tifany shares how her house has become a place for all of his friends and teammates to stop by and grieve, laugh, cry and remember their friend Matthew.

“Some of them have known him since elementary school, middle school, some have just met him,” she said. “They all just said how he’s made a huge impact. They said he was like the class clown, the talker.”

Matthew played baseball at Frederick Douglass High School. The team has organized a celebration of life for Matthew at the school on Sunday, May 4th.

Tifany says she’s so thankful for all the community has done for her family, but now she wants to help others, including the other family involved in the wreck.

There were five other people in the other car, including seven-year-old twins, their mother, and two teenagers. According to the GoFundMe, the majority of them are dealing with major injuries.

If you would like to donate to either family, you can click on this link or this link to visit the donation pages.

“Just be a light in people’s lives, spread kindness, be helpful to one another, don’t let the negativity of the world bring you down because Matthew sure didn’t do that,” Tifany said.