MISSOURI CITY, Texas – The family of a former high school football star from Missouri City says he is still fighting for his life after a crash in North Carolina.
KPRC 2 reporter Corley Peel spoke with the parents of Terrance Howard, a North Carolina Central University football player and former player of the University of Alabama and graduate of Ridge Point High School in Missouri City, about the devastating crash.
Howard’s family is in North Carolina with him as he remains on a ventilator but said their goal is to bring him back to Houston so he can receive care at home.
He recently transferred to North Carolina Central University to play football and run track and had traveled back to the University of Alabama to pack up the rest of his things along with his parents last weekend.
Howard was looking forward to a new football season at a new school after the 19-year-old posted his new plans on X, formally known as Twitter.
Those plans took a turn when he got into a minor car crash on I-85 near Salisbury, North Carolina early Monday morning during a storm. His family said he got out of his car to check on the people in the other vehicle. When he made sure they were all right, he turned around and was hit by another passing vehicle.
Howard’s family says he suffered life-threatening injuries, including massive brain trauma and is currently on a ventilator.
They’re hoping to bring him back to Texas to get a second option.
“We just need a hospital in Texas. In Houston, preferably. We have to make a level one trauma center, a post trauma center that would be willing, to take him in, with the diagnosis that he, prognosis that he has right now,” said Howard’s stepfather, Anthony Allen.
For now, his family is embracing what they call the “T4effect,” a nickname he earned playing football at Ridge Point High School and carried on into his college career and posting about it on social media.
“I can feel his spirit and hear him saying mom, hold it together. Its just the T4 effect of Terrence Emanuel Lamont Howard,” said his mother, Matishe Allen. “Before I ever had a son, the Lord gave me a promise that he was coming through a dream. And so I knew who he was. And I knew that he was coming. And I held on to that promise. And I’m still holding on, even though he’s here. I’m just not letting go because I know what the Lord promised me”
Howard’s family says they have received an outpouring of support from both North Carolina Central University as well as the University of Alabama. The family says former Alabama head coach Nick Saban has also reached out to them.