HOUSTON – A Houston family is devastated after 26-year-old Ricardo Sepulveda was killed in a hit-and-run crash last week. The family hopes the driver will come forward to the police.

“I always told him that he was born with something special from God since he had a beautiful smile since he was little,” his mother Linda Morgan said.

Linda Morgan said since Sepulveda was a little boy he has been filled with wonder and adventure.

“Rick lived a lot of life in 26 years," his stepfather David Morgan said. "He was studying to be a pilot. He had gotten on motorcycles. He loved that. He did jeeps, rock crawling in Monterrey, Mexico. He’s lived in Mexico and the US.”

Sepulveda loved to help people, his parents said. They said he believed in being kind and doing what was right.

“That was really Ricky... a really, really, really wonderful human being,” Linda Morgan said.

The family’s life would change on Feb. 7. Sepulveda was helping his cousin buy a motorcycle and took it out for a test drive near Interstate 45 and West Gulf Bank Road around 9 p.m. Sepulveda had stopped at a light, a car hit him and then drove away, his parents said. Sepulveda did not survive.

“Just someone so caring, so loving...why does somebody like him have to leave the world? This is the kind of people we need,” Linda Morgan said.

More than a week after the crash, the family doesn’t have answers as to who hit their son.

“Anybody who was at (Interstate) 45 and West Gulf Bank last Friday around 9 p.m., if you saw something, heard something, saw someone speeding off - it’s all going to add up and help,” David Morgan said.

The family said the pain of not knowing what happened hurts even more.

“My son...I wasn’t there to hold him...to say goodbye to him so he could feel me there," Linda Morgan said. “I wasn’t there next to him...He probably died there on the street laying down. I don’t know, and that really hurts. That’s why we need to bring this to justice.”

A GoFundMe page has been established for Sepulveda’s funeral expenses.

Anyone with information about the incident is encouraged to call the Houston Police Department at 713-884-3131.