SAN ANTONIO – Life still hangs in the balance for a driven, accomplished young woman.
An estranged uncle shot 23-year-old Hailey Reyes and her father, Michael Garcia, in Cedar Park near Austin, just a day before Mother's Day. He then turned the gun on himself.
Michael died and Hailey was put on life support.
Monday, the Cedar Park Police Department did not go into detail about Hailey's condition but confirmed she is still alive and being medically cared for.
Hailey went to Our Lady of the Lake University, where friends and faculty are struggling with what happened.
"Always had a smile on her face on the field. I honestly can't think of a single day when I've seen her not happy, which says a lot about her and the type of person she is," said Teegan Luckemeyer, who became Hailey's soccer teammate as a freshman at OLLU.
"Real optimistic, energetic, lively, always happy, brings up the mood of the group when it comes to training," said soccer coach Shane Hurley.
That's why the news hit hard for both of them when they heard she and her dad had been shot.
"Shocking at first and then utter heartbreak, there's really no other way to put it," Luckemeyer said.
Hurley started coaching Hailey at age 16 in club soccer, all the way through college at Our Lady of the Lake.
He said she had big goals, both on the soccer field and for her future.
She played at OLLU for three of her four years of college, taking the last year off to focus even harder on her studies. In 2014 and 2015, she received recognition as a scholar athlete.
"We're a family and we always will be. To her, her family, her husband, I speak for all her former teammates that we're all here for her, we're all praying and we're not going to stop," Luckemeyer said.
She asks the community to join her teammates and coaches in prayer.
Hailey graduated here from OLLU in 2015 with a psychology degree. She recently got married and has been working toward a master's degree.