Friends killed by train were ‘inseparable,’ family says

PORTLAND Ore. (KPTV/Gray News) - Families are in mourning over the loss of two 19-year-old men hit and killed by a train over the weekend in Oregon.

Brayden Fear, 19, from Hillsboro, and 19-year-old Kaleb Banzer, from Boring, were hit by the Metropolitan Area Express, or MAX, light rail train parallel to Interstate 84 on Saturday evening. According to Portland police, it happened after their car crashed on the freeway, and they entered a TriMet restricted area to retrieve a part from their car.

Fear’s aunt, Jody Golston, said that he had been at the “height of his life.”

“It’s so new and it’s so fresh, we’re just taking it minute by minute honestly,” she said Monday.

Golston said the news is hitting close-knit family hard, especially her daughter Mariah.

“He was her person, and likewise. They were 18 months apart,” she said. “They would joke around and call each other brother-cousin and sister-cousin, because they were so much closer than cousins.”

Fear graduated from Oregon City Service Learning Academy, and Golston said he had started a successful car detailing career and planned to open his own business.

“He worked really, really hard and did really well for himself for being 19,” she said.

Before his death, he had purchased his dream car and loved to take road trips. Golston said he’d reconnected with his best friend, Banzer, about a year ago.

“(They) literally were inseparable, and they were living their best lives at 19,” she said.

The Portland Police Department responded to the scene, and Chief Bob Day said in a news conference Monday that his heart went out to the families when he heard what happened.

“For the families directly impacted, that have lost a loved one, just that we grieve with them and we’re doing all that we can in our power to mitigate and minimize these events,” he said.

Golston said she and her family are taking things moment by moment, spending all the time they can with each other as they process the loss.

“He was loyal to a fault, he loved his people big, he loved to make people laugh,” she said. “He would help anybody with anything. Anything he did, he did with a lot of pride, and he wanted everyone to know that. That that’s who he was.”

Golston set up a GoFundMe to help with funeral expenses and to help support Fear’s dad and 8-year-old brother during this time.

There is also a GoFundMe set up for Banzer’s family.

“We are asking for a bit of help during this numbing and devastating time as the family grieves and has to make unimaginable decisions,” Kaleb’s aunt, Jessica Giusto, said on the GoFundMe page. “Kaleb lit up the room wherever he was. This loss will affect us forever.”

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