Outgoing Queens teenager Giselle Flores told her twin sister not to mourn if she died young.
On Saturday that hypothetical became tragically real. Hours before she was due to join her family for a Labor Day weekend gathering, Giselle died in a crash that also killed the 15-year-old boy operating the moped they were riding.
Giselle, 19, and Andy Rodriguez, 15, died early Saturday when Andy lost control of the moped and crashed into a barrier wall on Cross Island Parkway, according to police.
“She told me like, ‘if I die, I don’t want you to cry. I want you to party’,” said Sharick Flores, Giselle’s fraternal twin. “‘I want you to come cute, I want you to come pretty. I don’t want to see you crying for me’.”
“I feel so heartbroken,” the sibling told the Daily News on Sunday.
Police found Giselle sprawled on the asphalt, lifeless, on the southbound Cross Island Parkway near the 150th St. overpass around 2 a.m., next to a moped. A friend rushed Andy to Flushing Hospital Medical Center with extensive injuries, where he died.
“I feel like she kind of always knew,” her sister said. “That week, she had gone out shopping. She was like, ‘Girl, let’s go shopping Wednesday. What if we die tomorrow?’”
Sharick added, “She’d be like, ‘Yo, like, stop worrying about tomorrow. Stop worrying about what’s going to happen in the future.’ She would always say, ‘What if we die tomorrow?’”
Giselle was hanging out with one of Sharick’s close friends, and both got rides on mopeds. Another member of the group was driving in a car. Sharick said she believes both girls were headed home to Corona when tragedy struck.
Giselle and Andy did not know each other before that night, according to Sharick. “My best friend told me they were already hanging out with a different group of people and then those guys came to pick them up to supposedly take them home.”
Giselle and Andy were ahead of the other moped when Andy lost control, hit the car, then the highway wall, Sharick said.
Andy’s friend on the other moped dropped Sharick’s pal on the highway, picked up Andy and rushed to the hospital, Sharick said.
The 15-year-old’s cousin stayed behind and called 911.
“That’s when my friend called me,” Sharick said. “My friend told me, ‘Hey, I don’t know what to do. We’re in the highway. This guy, he left me here. And your sister’s down on the floor.’ She basically was like, ‘Your sister doesn’t move. She doesn’t breath.’ She was like, ‘Yo, there’s so much blood.’”
“I said, ‘please call 911,’” Sharick said.
Sharick, who lives in Monticello, drove two hours to the hospital, but her sister had died on the pavement.
“When I saw my best friend, she had my sister’s blood all over her legs and her shoes,” Sharick said.
Nuri Palaguachi, 25, a cousin to the twins, said Giselle was planning to graduate high school in November. She worked as a supermarket cashier, and dreamed of becoming a nurse.
“We’re having a gathering today at 5 p.m. The whole family is very heartbroken because we just didn’t expect this to happen,” the cousin said Sunday. “Every time we see each other, we get so excited because we don’t see each other that much…. And then that happened.”
Giselle was working Friday night, and had picked up some flour to make Buñuelos, or fried dough fritters.
“That day, she told me, ‘I’m going to end up working a double shift.’ I told her, ‘Are you sure?’ She tells me, ‘You can come pick me up tomorrow at 5 in the morning.’ And I said, ‘OK. Imma see you.'”
Giselle said she didn’t plan to go out that night, “But something told me, I feel like you are going to go out,” her cousin told the News.
Nayley Chimborazo, another cousin who worked at the supermarket with Giselle, said Giselle was excited for the family gathering.
“She had called her mom, like, ‘Do you want it? What kind of flour? And what should I bring for the kids?'” said Chimborazo, 21. “She was excited to come back home because all her siblings and mom and dad, they were already upstate for awhile and she was the only one back in Queens.”
Giselle’s mother is shattered by her death, Chimborazo said.
“We were all trying to be strong for my aunt. It’s not easy seeing her like that,” she said. “She can’t stop crying…. My uncle’s trying to be strong for her.”
Chimborazo described her cousin as funny, outgoing and talkative, able to hold a conversation for hours. “It’s never gloomy when she’s there. It’s never boring when she’s there. She always making everybody laugh some way, some how,” she said. “She genuinely cared about how you were doing.”
Giselle loved to dance and have a good time, and had an outsized presence. “She was very funny,” said Palaguachi. “She would always make us laugh. It’s just the way she would speak.”
“Every time she walked into the supermarket, she walked in sassy, saying hello to everybody. She made sure everybody knew she was there,” Chimborazo said. “She was not shy.”
Both Giselle and Andy’s families have set up GoFundMe accounts after their deaths.
“His loss leaves us with a great void. Family, friends, and community I ask for your support in this difficult time for me,” a woman identifying herself as Andy’s mother wrote in Spanish on his page.
On Sunday evening, relatives and friends gathered at the apartment in Flushing, Queens where Andy lived with his mom, father and sisters, where a memorial was set up outside. All were hugging and weeping loudly as they attempted to console one another.
Andy’s father was unable to speak because of his grief.
“He has no words,” said Erik, 24, a cousin of Andy’s who declined to give his last name. “Family is gathered. It was a very hard impact for the mother. Her second child in two years. Two years ago another child died in his country.”
“That was the oldest one, and Andy is the youngest one,” Erik said. The family is originally from El Salvador, Eric said. Andy was “the baby,” of the family, he said.
Like Giselle, Erik described Andy as outgoing and gregarious.
“He was a very happy person. Always say ‘hi’ to everybody he knew. Always happy with everybody. He gets along with every single person,” Eric said. “He was going to school and everything. So young. His life was starting.”
Giselle’s sister said she last spoke with her on Instagram Live as her twin hung out with a friend on a park bench, about an hour before the crash.
“She was like, ‘Hi, how are you? Imma go see you.’’ Sharick recounted. “She told me, ‘I’m going home and Imma go see you tomorrow.’ And this was exactly at 1 in the morning, and I said, ‘OK, girls. Get home safe!’
“And that was the last time I ever talked to her,” she said.
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