Rebecca Gayheart Says She "Didn't Want to Live" After Her Car Collision That Killed a Boy
Rebecca Gayheart took some time to reflect back on a major event in her past that's still haunting her. According to People, during a guest appearance Laura Cathcart Robbins's podcast, The Only One in the Room, Gayheart opened up about the car collision that resulted in the death of Jorge Cruz Jr., a 9-year-old boy that was crossing the street.
On June 13, 2001, Gayheart was driving her From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter costar Marco Leonardi's car when she struck Jorge. He passed away the next day and Gayheart paid his family $10,000 for funeral expenses and pleaded no contest to vehicular manslaughter in November of that year. People adds that she "was sentenced to probation, a one-year suspension of her license, a $2,800 fine, and 750 hours of community service" following the incident.
"I had a very terrible accident happen. A 9-year-old child died. And, you know, everything changed from that, and, I still have trouble talking about it," she said. "I just didn’t want to live after that accident. That's what it came down to. I couldn't handle it at all. So, I spent about a year just trying to kill myself, basically, by doing every self-destructive thing a person can do."
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Eighteen years later, Gayhart says that she still thinks about it. She says that she still replays the day in her head over and over, thinking about how things would have been different if she'd taken a different route or made a stop. But even though the collision stays with her, she says that she lives every day like she's making amends for it.
"I still replay it in my head of, 'Had I stopped at the gas station, maybe I wouldn't have been on that street.' You know, those things never go away," she said. "Today, I am able to ponder those questions and still realize that I deserve to be happy. That I am meant to be on this planet and that I have a purpose and I’m making, living amends for that, even though it was an accident."
