Two UF engineering sophomores died in a car accident in Mississippi on Saturday.
Associate Dean of Students Paige Crandall said Daniel Sacks, 19, and Maria Bahamon, 20, died on Saturday in a single-car accident.
Both students were studying industrial and systems engineering and sharing an apartment in Mississippi, where they were interning at Entergy Nuclear, a utilities company.
Crandall said the University Police Department contacted Mississippi law enforcement authorities for more information, but as of Monday afternoon, the state had no records of the accident.
Nicole Sacks, Daniel's sister, said her brother was driving to Biloxi, Miss., with Bahamon when the car slipped on the wet road and hit a tree.
The two students died instantly at around 1:30 p.m. Saturday, Sacks, a 21-year-old Florida State University senior, said Tuesday.
Darren Baxley, a UPD officer who has been in touch with Mississippi Highway Safety Patrol authorities, said he thinks the office hasn't received an accident report because the incident may have been handled by a smaller agency.
Mississippi doesn't have a centralized database for traffic fatalities, which makes forwarding information more time consuming, Baxley said. But report or not, friends and family of the two students have begun grieving.
'It's almost unbelievable'
Nicole Sacks said she became closer to her brother, Daniel, in college. Sacks said she talked to him almost every day.
She said he always acted like the man of the house when their dad was away on military duty.
Daniel was close with everyone in the family, she said. He would help her with computer problems, watch football with their mom, play golf with their dad and set an example for their little sister.
Sacks said her brother enjoyed quoting "Seinfeld" and wrestling with the family's pit bull, Murdoc. Whenever he came home to Panama City, he would make everyone eggs for breakfast, she said. He worked out often, paying special attention to his arm muscles.
"He always had to wear tight shirts to show them off for the girls," she said.
Javier Cue, a UF sophomore and Daniel's roommate, said he went to the gym at least three times a week and played intramural softball. Cue said he's having trouble accepting that his roommate is gone.
"It's almost unbelievable," he said.
Sacks joined UF's industrial and systems engineering program earlier this year, and he was hoping to find his place as an engineer during his Mississippi internship, Cue said.
'Everyone loved her'
Maritza Fernandez, Bahamon's mother, said her daughter's bosses had been impressed with her zest for her job.
"They said they received 300 percent more of what they were expecting," Fernandez said in Spanish.
But for Bahamon, her greatest achievement was being accepted to UF.
"She loved everything - the professors, the system, the students, the atmosphere," Fernandez said. "For her, it was the best."
Tomas Garces, Bahamon's boyfriend of four years, said her smile first attracted him.
Garces, a UF mechanical engineering senior, said he and Bahamon planned to study abroad in Europe and marry in a few years before having children.
"It was the four best years of my life," he said of their relationship. "I'm going to remember her forever."
He said the last time he saw her was less than two weeks ago in Nashville, Tenn., where they went to country music concerts and museums.
She drove six hours from Mississippi to meet him for a weekend, and he drove three hours from his internship in Kentucky.
Bahamon wanted to travel as much as possible. She wanted to visit Germany the most, he said, and she was already learning the language.
She thought it would benefit her career, which she was learning to love at her internship.
"She was very happy because she met a lot of higher-up people and made a lot of connections," he said. "Like always, whatever place she went, everyone loved her."
