Mother pleas for driver to come forward in deadly crash...

Linda Morgan has a simple message for the driver who killed her son Friday evening: Turn yourself in.

“I just want to know who did this to my son,” she said, through tears, the day after the car crash that claimed her son’s life.

Ricardo Sepulveda, 26, had been waiting at a red light at Gulf Bank off the Gulf Freeway about 9:05 p.m. Friday when a driver in an SUV smashed into his Suzuki motorcycle and a Nissan Cube also waiting at the light.

The SUV then sped off without waiting for police to arrive, according to Houston Police spokesman Kese Smith. Anyone with information is asked to call CrimeStoppers at 713-333-TIPS.

Houston Fire Department paramedics rushed Sepulveda to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

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Four people were traveling in the Nissan Cube, Smith said, including a pregnant mother and two children, ages 7 and 13 months.

“Fortunately they were not injured,” Smith said.

On Saturday afternoon, however, Sepulveda’s friends and family were grieving. David Morgan recalled his stepson as a vivacious and friendly man with a love for flying, motorcycles, and off-road rally racing.

Sepulveda had grown up in Monterrey, Mexico, and the greater Houston area. He graduated from Jersey Village High School. His music tastes ranged from Travis Scott to Pink Floyd — who he went to see with his mom, in concert — and he’d had recently become interested in sport bikes, Morgan said.

He loved Jeeps, and off-roading, and attending races in Mexico, they said. Sometimes he made extra money helping drivers upgrade their cars.

In Houston, Sepulveda had worked several logistics jobs in local warehouses. In recent months, however, he had quit to pursue his pilot’s license full time, Morgan said.

Like Linda, he called on the driver who killed Sepulveda to turn himself in.

“I’d like for whoever did this to take responsibility, admit what they’ve done and be prosecuted,” he said. “There needs to be some reckoning for that.”

st.john.smith@chron.com

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