The last few minutes Ahmed Habib Fadi Dwabe spent with his friends weren’t extraordinary.
They were hungry.
They were driving home after a night at the Fort Worth Stockyards.
They were talking about stopping at Whataburger.
And they were laughing.
In fact, the friends had apparently turned the drive into a contest to see who could make everyone laugh the most.
Habib won.
Then, at about 2:30 in the morning on September 18, everything changed.
The group came upon a crash on Interstate 35W in Fort Worth.
Habib and his friends stopped.
The 18-year-old recent graduate got out because someone he didn’t know needed help.
He would never get back into the vehicle.
Fort Worth police say another vehicle struck Habib, killing him at the scene.
But in the days after his death, something remarkable emerged from the stories told by the people who knew him.
Stopping for a stranger wasn’t an isolated heroic decision that suddenly appeared in Habib’s final moments.
It was consistent with the way he had already been living.
Nearly a decade earlier, when Habib was only 9 years old, he had made news for another decision involving someone he didn’t know.
He grew his long, curly hair because he wanted to donate it to help a child with cancer.
Different highway.
Different circumstances.
Different age.
But remarkably similar instinct:
Someone else could use my help.
He Was Only 18, and His Adult Life Was Just Beginning
Habib had recently graduated from Joshua High School, south of Fort Worth.
He had also recently returned from a 10-day trip to Lebanon with his aunt, according to family friend Sonya Espinoza.
Friends described him as funny, loving, joyful and surrounded by people.
His family was close.
Espinoza told NBC 5 that Habib had the kind of relationship with his mother where he would hug her whenever he walked past her.
Those aren’t the details normally included in a traffic report.
But they’re the details that explain why this story became about much more than what happened on Interstate 35W.
To police, there had been a crash.
To the people who loved Habib, an entire presence had suddenly disappeared from their everyday lives.
The Night Began With Friends Having Fun
Habib had gone to the Fort Worth Stockyards with friends.
On their way back, they were hungry and considering a stop at Whataburger.
Friend Daniel Rodriguez later remembered the group laughing and joking in the vehicle.
They decided to see who could make everyone laugh the most.
Habib apparently won.
Rodriguez remembered that the laughter continued right up until they got out of the vehicle.
It’s a seemingly insignificant detail.
A group of teenagers laughing in a car.
A late-night food run.
Friends talking.
Nothing about it would have seemed important while it was happening.
Then it became one of the last memories they would ever have with him.
Then They Saw Someone Who Needed Help
According to Fort Worth police, an initial collision occurred on I-35W near Felix Street, south of downtown Fort Worth, at about 2:30 a.m.
Habib and his friends encountered the crash and stopped to help.
He got out of the vehicle.
Police say another vehicle then struck him.
Habib died at the scene.
One person from the original crash was transported to a hospital.
The accident eventually shut down both directions of I-35W for hours.
It is important to add another piece of context here.
Following Habib’s death and other similar incidents, Fort Worth police urged people not to stop on busy highways unless absolutely necessary and instead to call 911 for assistance.
Highway crash scenes can remain extremely dangerous even after the first collision has ended.
That safety message doesn’t diminish why Habib stopped.
It gives families an important lesson to carry forward from the tragedy:
Wanting to help is admirable.
On a high-speed roadway, one of the safest ways to help may be getting yourself to a protected location and immediately calling trained emergency responders.
Police Later Made an Arrest
Fort Worth police later arrested 27-year-old Sergio Escorza, the driver authorities say struck Habib.
He was charged with intoxication manslaughter with a vehicle.
Escorza subsequently posted a $15,000 bond and was released from jail, according to CBS Texas.
The charge is an accusation, and Escorza has not been convicted.
For Habib’s family and friends, however, the criminal proceedings are only one part of what happened.
Their memories keep returning to the person they lost.
To Understand Why Habib Stopped, Go Back Almost 10 Years
This is where his story becomes especially moving.
Habib had been in the news before.
He was only 9.
And the story was about his hair.
Habib had grown his curly hair past his shoulders because he wanted it long enough to donate for a child with cancer.
There was a problem.
His long hair conflicted with his school district’s grooming policy.
But Habib didn’t want to cut it.
CBS Texas had reported on his family’s dispute with the school district back in 2017.
His mother, Faye Abunijmeh, explained at the time that her son was proud of his curls because of what he wanted to do with them.
Habib wanted another child to have them.
That was the boy his family knew long before anyone would call him a Good Samaritan on Interstate 35W.
At 9, He Was Already Thinking About Someone Else
Growing hair sounds like a small thing.
For a child, it wasn’t necessarily small.
Habib had to live with comments about it.
He dealt with a school grooming policy that created problems for his family.
NBC 5’s archived reporting includes Habib himself explaining why he didn’t want to cut it:
He wanted it long enough to donate.
The significance becomes clearer now.
At 9, Habib couldn’t know anything about the highway where his life would eventually end.
He couldn’t know what decisions he would face at 18.
He wasn’t practicing for some future heroic moment.
He was simply making one decision about what kind of person he wanted to be.
And then he made another.
And another.
That is how character usually develops.
Not all at once.
Quietly.
See NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth’s report remembering Habib and his earlier effort to donate his hair
The Final Decision Was Consistent With the Earlier Ones
CBS Texas drew the connection clearly in its reporting after Habib’s death.
The 9-year-old growing his hair for another child and the 18-year-old getting out of a vehicle to help a stranger were separated by nearly a decade.
But people who knew him saw the same person.
Family friend Sonya Espinoza described him as someone with a kind spirit.
His friends didn’t seem surprised that Habib stopped.
It fit the person they already knew.
And perhaps that is the part of this story worth sitting with.
We sometimes imagine character as something revealed in one enormous moment.
Usually, it has been revealing itself for years.
His Teacher Remembered the Effect He Had on a Room
Habib’s kindness wasn’t remembered only through dramatic acts.
His former teacher, Ki Jamal, wrote publicly about the student she remembered.
Even after Habib was no longer in her class, she said he would come back just to visit.
She remembered a young man who brought happiness with him.
Her description wasn’t about accomplishments or awards.
It was about smiling bigger, laughing harder and enjoying life more fully because Habib had been around.
That’s a very different measurement of a life.
Not:
How much did he accomplish?
How much money did he make?
How impressive was his résumé?
But:
What happened to the people around him because he was there?
His Friends Remember the Laughter
The memories his friends shared after the crash are heartbreaking partly because they’re so ordinary.
Not some elaborate final speech.
Not a dramatic goodbye.
They remembered laughing.
They remembered talking about food.
They remembered driving together.
They remembered Habib winning their silly contest.
Rodriguez remembered his friend as funny and told CBS Texas how much he loved and missed him.
Around 50 friends gathered at Joshua City Park after Habib’s death for a balloon release.
Later, his funeral and burial drew crowds of people who had been affected by his short life.
His Mother Lost the Moments No One Thinks to Photograph
Parents spend years documenting the milestones.
The first day of school.
Birthdays.
Christmas mornings.
Graduation.
Family vacations.
Those are the photographs we know to take.
But after someone dies, families often discover that the things they ache for aren’t always the milestones.
They’re the routines.
Habib’s mother wrote publicly after losing her son about something painfully simple:
The good-morning kisses were gone.
So were the good-night kisses.
Think about that for a moment.
A mother had just lost her 18-year-old son in a tragedy that would become television news across North Texas.
There were police investigations.
News cameras.
A criminal charge.
Highway closures.
Funeral arrangements.
But grief reduced all of that enormous noise to something much smaller.
A kiss in the morning.
A kiss before bed.
The things that seemed ordinary until they stopped happening.
Maybe That’s Why This Story Resonates So Deeply
There is something uncomfortable about realizing how much of life we label “ordinary.”
Making breakfast.
Driving children to school.
Answering a parent’s phone call.
Sitting beside your spouse on the couch.
Checking on a friend.
Walking through the house and hugging your mother.
Making everyone laugh on the way to Whataburger.
None of these moments announces itself as important.
Most of them will never appear in a photograph.
But put enough of them together and they become a life.
Habib’s story illustrates that unusually clearly because the people remembering him aren’t primarily describing one grand accomplishment.
They’re describing patterns.
He hugged.
He laughed.
He visited.
He helped.
He cared.
And long before his final act made the news, those patterns were already there.
The Highway Wasn’t Where Habib Became Generous
It was simply where the world noticed.
That’s an important distinction.
If the only thing we knew about Habib were the circumstances of his death, we could describe what happened as one extraordinary act of kindness.
But the childhood story changes the meaning.
At 9, he was willing to endure the inconvenience of growing his hair because another child might benefit.
At 18, he saw people in trouble on a highway and stopped.
In between were years his family and friends describe with the same language: kindness, laughter, affection and generosity.
Character wasn’t created at 2:30 that morning.
It had been forming during thousands of ordinary moments nobody outside his family ever saw.
That Is a Powerful Question for Families
We often ask young people what they want to become.
A doctor?
Teacher?
Engineer?
Business owner?
Parent?
Artist?
Those are worthwhile questions.
Habib’s story suggests another one:
Who are you becoming while you’re deciding what you’re going to do?
A career describes how someone may spend a portion of life.
Character describes how that person enters every room along the way.
Children learn that character in ordinary places.
At the dinner table.
At school.
In the car.
With siblings.
When someone is excluded.
When a friend is embarrassed.
When helping is inconvenient.
When nobody is keeping score.
Adults Aren’t Exempt From That Question
The same principle applies long after graduation.
Most adults will never face a moment that becomes a television news story.
But we face smaller decisions constantly.
Do we make the phone call?
Do we apologize?
Do we notice the person sitting alone?
Do we help when it would be easier to keep moving?
Do our children see us treating strangers with dignity?
Do the people who live with us receive the same kindness we readily offer everyone else?
None of those choices feels monumental.
That’s the point.
A person’s character is rarely built during the moment everyone is watching.
It’s built during the moments when almost nobody is.
There Is Also a Safety Lesson Families Shouldn’t Miss
Habib’s kindness deserves to be remembered.
His death also illustrates how dangerous roadside crash scenes can be.
Fort Worth police specifically urged people following this tragedy to avoid stopping on busy highways unless absolutely necessary and instead call 911.
If you encounter a serious highway crash, helping doesn’t necessarily mean running toward the damaged vehicle.
Calling 911 immediately, providing an accurate location and keeping yourself out of moving traffic can be critically important.
If your own vehicle is involved in a collision and can be safely moved, follow the instructions of authorities and emergency dispatchers.
The lesson shouldn’t be to become less willing to help.
It should be to help without unnecessarily creating another victim.
Habib’s Family Is Left With 18 Years
That number feels painfully small.
Eighteen birthdays.
One high school graduation.
Family trips.
School struggles.
Friends.
Laughter.
A head of curly hair that once became a public argument because a little boy wanted another child with cancer to have it.
And one final night with friends.
His family should have had decades more.
Nothing about finding meaning in Habib’s life changes the tragedy of losing him so young.
There is no lesson that makes an 18-year-old’s death acceptable.
But there is something worth preserving in the way the people closest to him describe the life that came before it.
We Become Someone in the Ordinary Moments
Most of us don’t know what our defining moment will be.
Maybe there won’t be one.
Maybe there shouldn’t have to be.
Perhaps the better way to think about a meaningful life is not to wait for the extraordinary opportunity.
Habib’s story points toward something quieter.
At 9, care about the child you’ve never met.
At 18, care about the stranger who appears to need help.
Today, hug your mother when you walk past her.
Make your friends laugh.
Visit the teacher who mattered to you.
Notice people.
Call someone.
Be generous when nobody is writing a story about it.
Because eventually the ordinary moments stop looking ordinary.
They become the evidence of who we were.
One Final Memory
In the final minutes before Habib’s life changed forever, his friends weren’t discussing mortality.
They were laughing.
They were hungry.
They were headed toward food.
Habib had just won their laughing contest.
Then they encountered someone who needed help.
And the young man his family had watched becoming generous since childhood responded in a way that made sense to everyone who knew him.
He stopped.
There is profound sadness in that ending.
But there is also something worth remembering about everything that came before it.
Ahmed Habib Fadi Dwabe didn’t become the person his family now describes during his final moments on Interstate 35W.
He had been becoming that person all along.
Sources
CBS Texas — Family and friends remember Good Samaritan teen after deadly North Texas crash
NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth — Friends mourn 18-year-old killed while helping after a crash
CBS Texas — Follow-up reporting on the crash and criminal charge