Dallas Baptist University Mourns Three Students Killed In Crash

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DALLAS (CBS 11 NEWS)  - Family and friends are mourning the loss of three local college students killed in an overnight crash.

The three Dallas Baptist University students were just south of the campus when their truck went off the road.

Police tell CBS 11,  junior Justin Schubert, junior Will Smith, and freshman D.J. Sarenac were headed south away from the school on Mountain Creek Parkway.

It still isn't clear who was behind the wheel, but officers say it appears the driver lost control, and crashed into a large fiberglass cylinder that was set to be installed near Mountain Creek Lake.

That's when their truck became airborne and hit a wooden utility pole then landed upside down. All three young men were pronounced dead at the crash site.

The cracked cylinder and debris left from the overnight crash offered little in the way of answers as to what caused the truck to veer off the road so close to the Dallas Baptist University campus.

"I can't quite grasp that I'm not going to see them every day anymore. I saw them almost every single day," DBU student Caleb Smith said.

Like many of their fellow students Caleb Smith struggled to make sense of the deaths.

The three lived on the same hall in the same dorm on campus.

Schubert was a communications major, Smith a business student, and Sarenac studied both math and computer science with big plans beyond his undergraduate years.

"He wanted to go to MIT after graduating, and go there and become some expert hacker, I think," Caleb said.

But first the native Serbian had more immediate plans to get his driver's license, something Caleb had hoped to help him do in the days ahead.

"It's strange and sad that I don't get to do that anymore," Caleb said.

Now university officials plan to hold a memorial service for the three young men to honor the lives they lead on campus and the times classmates shared with them.

The cause of the crash remains under investigation. A remembrance service will be held at Pilgrim Chapel Sunday at 9:00 p.m.

(©2016 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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