Car crash kills Tech student
Meg Miller, CT News Reporter
April 24 2007
Virginia Tech freshman, Jeff Nielsen Santo Domingo Soriano, died in a car crash Friday afternoon after returning home to Chesapeake, Virginia.
According to a news release from Margie Long, Public Information Officer of the Virginia Beach Police Department and 1997 Virginia Tech alumni, Soriano's 1999 Honda Prelude was traveling westbound on Providence Road. The vehicle was in the right lane at a high rate of speed when it lost control and struck a curb. The car then slid sideways across the left-bound lane and flipped over before striking a tree on the passenger's side.
Rob Waring heard the crash from inside his office at GSH Real Estate. He said that he rushed outside after hearing the noise and called his staff to go out to the road.
"I tried to get in the driver's side door and couldn't get that," Waring said, "So I went to the passenger's side door."
Waring said he got a good grip of Soriano's wrists and pulled him out of the passenger's side.
"There were flames coming out of the bottom of the car," Waring said, "That's when I got a little panicky."
After Waring pulled Soriano out of the car, the vehicle went into flames. Soriano was then airlifted to Norfolk General Hospital, but died later that evening as a result of massive head trauma.
Waring, who attended Tech in the 1970's, was clad in Virginia Tech gear for Hokie Hope day when he was pulling Soriano out of the car. He said it wasn't until he got back from a vigil for the Virginia Tech victims held at Mount Trashmore Park that night that he found out his fellow Hokie didn't make it.
"We as a Hokie nation have had a hard week," Waring said, "(That victory) would have been nice."
According to his father, Enrique Soriano, Soriano was an engineering student who loved to play basketball with his brothers because they have such a big family. He also learned how to play guitar in high school and even made his own video playing it.
"He was a nice boy, he never gave us anything that would make us raise our voice," Soriano said about his son. "He always cared about us."
Soriano's father also said that he called the family everyday while he was at college, and they would go up every two weeks to visit and support him.
"Maybe I can understand it later, but for right now I'm just going to fight through it," Enrique Soriano said.