by: Mike Suriani

Posted: Aug 20, 2024 / 05:34 PM CDT

Updated: Aug 21, 2024 / 12:54 PM CDT

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OXFORD, Miss. — Friends are mourning the loss of a teenager killed in a motor vehicle accident over the weekend.

“It shows how short life is,” a friend said. “How quick something can happen – in an instant.”

Gray Cassidy, 19, died after his truck flipped and landed upside down in a pond off Lafayette County Road 103.

“Gray was an awesome person,” Forrest Rowe said. “He always had a smile on his face and he would do anything for anybody.”

Rowe was emotional while recalling his relationship wth Cassidy. A young man he described as a best friend and a hunting buddy.ORIGINAL STORY: Oxford teen killed in car accident on MS road

‘We didn’t start out very, very close but we ended up starting to hunt together more and more and more,” Rowe said. “He started becoming part of my family and I started becoming part of his.”

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Like many, Rowe was concerned when Cassidy didn’t return home Sunday and he was in the process of going to help search for him.

“We were trying to figure out where he was,” Rowe said. “(We) asked around, asked people he may have been with just to see where he could be because it wasn’t like him to just not show back up at home.”

Rowe would soon learn Cassidy died when his truck flipped and landed upside down in a pond off Lafayette County Road 103.

“I was very distraught,” Rowe said. “I had to pull over and get out. I just broke down.”

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WREG was told that one of Gray Cassidy’s favorite things to do was come out to Sporting Life Kennels, where Rowe works and hang out with a red labrador named Murf.

“He really loved the way Murf looked and how pretty he was,” Rowe said. “So, that’s why he was so in love with him.”

Cassidy was part of a group of local hunters from Lafayette County who posted videos on a channel called “Sandycreek.tv.”

“You could count on Gray for anything,” Sam Sciortino said. “If you were broken down on the ride of the road in the middle of the night and you coud get a hold of him, he’d be there.”

According to the Lafayette County Sheriff’s Office, the accident is still under investigation.

Funeral services are set for Thursday at Waller Funeral Home in Oxford.