A Promising Life Is Cut Short

If you wanted to find Tewksbury resident Jeffrey Jaimes on any given summer evening over the last few years, the best place to look was the Sal Frasca Soccer Complex off North Street.

There was always a good chance you'd bump into Jaimes and his close friend Ehsan Tabrizi banging soccer balls around the upper fields at Frasca.

For Jaimes, a 2010 graduate of Shawsheen Technical High School, soccer was one of his passions. He had played in the , and had gone on to play at Shawsheen Tech, where he captained the team and earned Commonwealth Athletic Confrence all-star honors as a senior.

Tragically, Jaimes life was cut short as the result of a . Jaimes was transported to Saints Memorial Hospital in Lowell, and later med-flighted to Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston. Severely injured and badly burned in the crash, Jaimes succumbed to his wounds early Monday morning.

Jaimes had taken a year off from school after graduating, spending much of the past year undergoing basic training for the Army National Guard. He had recently returned from Guard training at Fort Bliss (Texas), and had been accepted to attend Salem State University in the fall. Jaimes had planned to study criminal justice at Salem State. He was to have attended his freshman orientation there this week.

"He wanted to be a state trooper someday, that was his goal," said Jaimes' father, Esteban Jaimes, of Andover Street in Tewksbury. "He was a very happy, very funny, normal kid. He was very friendly. He tried to befriend anybody. He would break the ice right away."

Jaimes, who turned 19 in January, was born in Chelsea and moved to Tewksbury with his family when he was in sixth grade. He attended the before enrolling at Shawsheen Tech.

Beside his father, Jaimes leaves his mother Sandra, his grandmother Maria and two sisters; 20-year-old Jocelyn and 15-year-old Allison.

"It's devastating for us, especially leaving two sisters behind," said Esteban Jaimes as he visited the crash site on Livingston Street Monday evening. "It's tough for me, too, but I have to be strong for my family."

A steady stream of friends and former classmates visited the crash site Monday, signing a cross, leaving flowers and candles and talking about their memories of James.

"He was a character, always making people smile," said former classmate Brittany Cremins of Wilmington. "He always had a smile on his face."

"At the all night grad party the night we graduated, I remember everyone was dancing in the middle of the cafeteria and he was like getting up on people's shoulders," said former classmate Rebecca Manzo of Billerica. "He was just so funny."

"It's so unreal," Cremins added.

Guardsman Kory Jannell of Lawrence, who graduated from National Guard training with Jaimes in February, also remembered Jaimes as friendly and easy to get to know.

"He was real outgoing," Jannell said. "You knew when he was in the room. He was a great guy."

The cause of the accident is still under investigation.

Funeral arrangements have not yet been announced.