One wrong move. One drifted lane. One young man dead because of it. On Tuesday night, May 12th, at around 10:30 p.m., 18-year-old Alex Gil Hernandez of Zionville got behind the wheel of a 2017 Ram truck and headed south on NC 105 near the Avery County line in Watauga County. At some point on that road, his truck crossed the centerline. What happened next was unavoidable for the man coming the other way.
The oncoming vehicle was a 2019 Ram driven by 20-year-old Daylen H. Buchanan of Bakersville. He had nowhere to go. Hernandez’s truck hit Buchanan’s head-on, and the collision was catastrophic. Daylen Buchanan died right there at the crash site. He never had a fighting chance.
Hernandez came out of it with minor injuries. He was taken to Watauga Medical Center, patched up, and then handed something much heavier — criminal charges. The North Carolina State Highway Patrol charged the 18-year-old with misdemeanor death by motor vehicle and reckless driving. Two charges that will follow him for a long time, attached to a night he can never undo.
Investigators were clear that neither speed nor impairment appeared to play a role in the crash. That detail is significant. Nobody was drunk. Nobody was drag racing. Hernandez’s vehicle simply crossed the centerline — and a 20-year-old kid from Bakersville paid for that with his life. There’s something deeply sobering about that, the kind of thing that makes you grip your steering wheel a little tighter.
It’s hard not to sit with the weight of what the young Zionville driver now carries. He walked away from that wreck, yes — but walking away isn’t the same as being okay. He crossed a line on a mountain road and ended another man’s life before either of them had barely started theirs. That’s not something time just washes away.
NC 105 was closed for several hours following the crash as troopers worked the scene and documented the collision. The road sat quiet and dark while investigators did their jobs, the kind of stillness that only comes after something goes terribly wrong on a stretch of highway most people drive without thinking twice.
The legal process for Hernandez is just beginning, but whatever comes of those charges in a courtroom, the real weight of this night isn’t one a judge can measure. Two Ram trucks. One centerline crossed. One family in Mitchell County now grieving a son who was only 20 years old.
