It was 5:10 AM on Sept. 11 when Dylan Hsu stopped along the 405 Freeway in Torrance to help his fraternity mate Benjamin Anh Luong. But while he and Luong were changing Luong’s front left tire, a car swerved off the road and struck them, killing both.

Hsu, who was a 2015 graduate of DBHS, was remembered last week as charismatic, witty, and conversational.  He was about to start his sophomore year at the University of California Riverside.

The group was struck by a passing Scion. Luong, 22, was pronounced dead at the scene, while Hsu, 19, later died at a hospital. A third victim, also of Hsu’s party, received head trauma and lacerations. The driver of the Scion was not arrested and an investigation to determine whether alcohol was a factor in the accident is ongoing. Another passenger in Hsu’s car was uninjured.

While at DBHS, Hsu was on the varsity swim team and swam mostly the 50 and 100 free and the 100 back in his senior year. Swim coach Darlys Ankeny was the coach for the second half of Hsu’s high school life and knew him for two years. She describes him as helpful and an encouraging influence for the team.

“He always had a smile on his face and always did so much for the team. He would always come up to us and go, ‘Oh, I’m going to drop time on this coach!’ and sure as heck, he would always drop time, whether he’d been practicing or not,” Ankeny said. “He was always encouraging to everyone, no matter how fast or slow they were.”  

David Chen, Hsu’s fraternity president at the University of California Riverside, created a GoFundMe page in order to help the families of the two victims with funeral costs. It has reached $29,218 of its $30,000 goal.

“As brothers, as well as as friends, we want to help aid both of their grieving families because both of these men have been there to aid us in our tough times,” Chen wrote on the page. “As we mourn the loss of these two, it is hard to even begin to fathom the amount of heartache their respective families suffer from. Although it might not be much, we can all pitch in and help them in their darkest hour.”

Junior Hailey Shi attended the same afterschool as Hsu and says she values the memories she has of him.

“He was a really charismatic person. He would never fail to make anyone laugh, and he was the type who was very talkative, and he would make any tension dissolve. We would go to the park and we would climb trees together, and that’s something I really treasure now, even though it’s a pretty normal activity to do,” Shi said.