Vidor couple perishes in wreck leaving their own wedding
By Chris Moore and Kim Brent Updated 9:36 pm CDT, Friday, August 23, 2019
Young newlyweds were killed Friday afternoon in a savage car wreck while pulling out of the judge's office where they had just tied the knot.
"They hadn't even been married for five minutes," said LaShawna Morgan, mother of groom Harley Morgan, 19, and mother-in-law to Rhiannon Morgan, 20, all of Vidor.
A young couple was killed Friday in a car wreck on Texas 87 on their way back from being married August 23, 2019.
Like other members of the wedding party, LaShawna Morgan was following close behind and witnessed the devastation as a pickup pulling a trailer loaded with a tractor hit the couple's Chevy Cavalier on Texas 87 near the local airport. The impact caused the much smaller car to flip multiple times before coming to rest in a ditch in tall grass and brush.
The groom's sister, Christina Fontenot, doubts the couple ever saw the truck coming.
"I had to sit there and watch my two babies die," LaShawna Morgan said as she waited for authorities to extract the bodies. "That is an image I will have for the rest of my life. I still have his blood on my hands from trying to pull him and her out of there."
Harley and Rhiannon were declared dead at the scene by Orange County Justice of the Peace Joy Dubose-Simonton — the same judge who moments earlier had presided over their nuptials.
Their deaths come less than a year after another wedding-day tragedy with links to Orange County. Last November, Orangefield High School grad Bailee Ackerman Byler, 24, had just wed Will Byler in Uvalde when the couple perished in a helicopter crash. They were en route to the airport to start their honeymoon.
They were memorialized at a joint funeral service in Vidor.
About 3 p.m. on Friday, Harley and Rhiannon Morgan and five family and friends who had just celebrated with them were headed to the county courthouse to file their marriage license, get Rhiannon's name legally changed and take a few more photos. Later, they planned to have cake at his mom's house.
Instead, a group of about a dozen, including co-workers, gathered at the Dunkin' Donuts/Baskin Robbins in Vidor, where Harley was a night baker, to mourn over a tableau of loss: The cake, the bridal bouquet, the groom's watch and wedding ring, his favorite cap.
Reality sank in for LaShawna Morgan hours earlier. As she stood along the section of shut-down highway, authorities brought over items such as the blood-stained bouquet and a manila envelope containing the marriage license.
"Please go home and hug your loved ones tonight," she said under a sullen sky. "Do not go to bed angry."
The driver of the truck reportedly was not injured.
Harley and Rhiannon, childhood sweethearts who had dated off and on since eighth grade, were both looking toward the future. Harley was thinking of going back to college and Rhiannon, who worked at a local Walmart, hoped to attend nursing school. They had planned to have a formal wedding ceremony Dec. 20.
She had dreamed of a December wedding.
"The only thing they wanted was to get married and start their life," LaShawna Morgan said. "The two of them had so many dreams and they wanted their family surrounding them. Life is precious. You don't know how much longer you are going to have a person. Stop worrying about the small stuff. This should've been the happy-ever-after story."