NEED TO KNOW
- Earlier this month, married teachers David and Maria Galindo Nunney died during a trip to their son Noah off at college in North Carolina
- Their eldest son tells POEPLE he initially feared his younger siblings, who were in the car at the time, had also died — fortunately, although seriously injured, they both survived
- Now, Noah says his focus is on his 9-year-old brother Leo and his 15-year-old sister Lucia, who are both on the road to recovery
A rising sophomore, whose parents and siblings were on a trip to drop him off at college, feared the worst when he arrived at the scene of a fatal crash on a North Carolina highway.
“When I arrived to the scene, I thought all four were gone,” Noah Nunney, 19, tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview. “They wouldn’t let me out of the car, and the way that they sat me down and the look on the officer’s face was truly horrifying.”
The college student was then told that his mom, Maria Galindo Nunney, 50, had died, and his dad Donald, 55, had been airlifted to a hospital. His younger siblings Leo, 9, and Lucia, 15, had been transported by ambulance to a different hospital.
When Noah got to the hospital, there was little information about his siblings. He later learned that his dad had a heart attack behind the wheel and died within five minutes of arriving at the hospital.
“They didn’t even have to perform an autopsy because all signs led to a heart attack with my father,” says Noah of the cause of the crash. “He was driving, had a heart attack and they swerved off the road.”
After learning that both his parents had died, Noah says he “realized that I really had to focus on what was important in this situation,” which is doing “whatever I can do to make sure that the kids are okay.”
“Since then,” the teen adds, “that’s been my main priority.”
On Thursday, Aug. 14, Donald and Maria, who both worked as teachers in Cleveland, drove from Ohio to take Noah to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before the start of the school year.
The next day, the family, including their two youngest children, left their hotel to meet Noah on campus. Their other son, Diego, 18, had stayed in Cleveland because of work.
The Nunneys wanted to get lunch and spend the day together before heading back home on Saturday.
“My sister is a big fan of the show The Summer I Turned Pretty, and that was filmed on UNC campus,” says Noah, who planned on giving his family a tour of the college and show Lucia locations from the hit show. “But we didn’t get to all of that.”
That afternoon, Noah checked his sister’s location and saw that they were about 37 minutes away from campus, enough time for the family to arrive around 1:30 p.m., their scheduled meet-up time.
Noah was waiting in his dorm room with friends when the pick-up time came and went — and he realized that Lucia’s location hadn’t changed. When he wasn’t able to reach his family by phone, he knew something was wrong.
Once Noah realized their vehicle hadn’t moved, he asked a friend to drive him to their location.
What Noah didn’t yet know was that around 1:18 p.m., his family’s vehicle “ran off the right side of the roadway … [and] struck several small trees,” a spokesperson for the North Carolina State Highway Patrol previously told PEOPLE.
Their car then traveled down an embankment and collided with a large tree.
Donald, who was driving the vehicle, and Maria, who was sitting in the passenger seat, were killed, while their two younger children survived and were hospitalized with serious injuries.
Noah later learned that his younger brother broke both arms, both legs and was on a ventilator. While the 9-year-old boy made it through the night, Noah’s sister had bruising on her brain — and he wasn’t immediately sure she would make it. Fortunately, by the following afternoon, she was also headed on the path of recovery.
“Seeing them improve has really helped me improve mentally with the whole situation,” says Noah.
Since the accident, Noah says “there hasn’t been a moment where I felt alone.”
Within minutes of arriving at the hospital, two staff members from his scholarship program, Morehead-Cain, arrived, along with his roommate. By Friday night, loved ones from both sides of the family had either arrived or were on their way to support Donald and Maria’s children.
Staff members from the college have also helped organize food, housing and essentials as the children recover.
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Leo has now been taken off a ventilator and Noah says his brother “has not stopped talking since” and is expected to make a full recovery.
Meanwhile, Lucia — who was finally able to see her younger brother yesterday — is able to stand and have conversations. However, Noah says his sister hasn’t healed enough yet to learn about her parents’ deaths.
Even as the siblings recover physically, they’re now grappling with a life-altering chasm in their lives. As Noah grieves his parents, he says it’s helped to see how loved they were by former students and the local community. Says Noah, “All the friends I grew up with were texting me afterwards saying it felt like their parent had died.”
Donald was a teacher at Joseph M. Gallagher Elementary, while his wife worked at Wilbur Wright Elementary School, a spokesperson for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District confirms to PEOPLE.
The Sunday after the crash, on Aug. 17, Lennox Thompson, the principal of Joseph M. Gallagher, sent a heartfelt letter to school members. He wrote, “They both were well known in Cleveland, in their own community and, moreover, well respected and will be missed.”
While their son, Noah, isn’t sure what the future will look like — including a long-term plan for his siblings’ care — he wants to see his younger siblings play sports again. As for himself, he plans on taking a semester off, but will graduate from college. “I know that’s what my parents would’ve wanted,” says Noah.
For now, he plans on honoring his generous, loving parents who raised their children to “be the best at everything that we could do.” And he’s holding onto the memory of the day his parents dropped him off to college for his freshman year.
“It was the first time they saw me as an adult,” he says. “They saw me, truthfully, as more of a man than just their kid, and I felt like that was something that will always stick with me.”
A GoFundMe page created to support the couple’s children has raised more than $270,000, as of Friday, Aug. 22.
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