It has been exactly one year since Aline Freywald lost her son, Americo Luis Freywald Dos Santos, the driver of an Adapto minibus. On 1 September 2025, two vehicles collided head-on on the N15 between Heiderscheid and Feulen, killing all five people involved.
"When he died, a part of me went with him – a part of all of us", she says.
Just days before the accident, the family had been together celebrating a 40th birthday. A few days later, one of Freywald's four children was gone.
She remembers her son as kind and quiet, always willing to help and deeply attached to his family. He regularly went shopping with his grandmother and visited his great-grandmother at her care home.
He may have spent plenty of time gaming on his computer at home, but whenever his family was together, Americo was there.
"He always left early in the morning for work. Then he would come back during his break at midday, and if I was in the kitchen, he would always come running up the stairs. That was just him", Freywald says.
According to her, Americo always wanted to know how everyone's day had gone. In the evenings, he would often join his parents on the sofa to watch television, and whenever his father was in Portugal, he would keep his mother company.
Those are the moments in which his absence is now felt most.
"He was always with me. I miss his voice, I miss everything. Sometimes you go back and watch videos just to hear his voice."
It took a long time for the family to fully comprehend what had happened on 1 September 2025.
When police knocked on the door at around 11.30pm that night, Freywald initially thought something had happened to Americo's vehicle, or that he had broken down on his way home from work.
"I even asked, 'Where is he?' And one of the police officers said, 'No, you don't understand, it's serious…' But at that moment, I still couldn't take it in."
She called her husband, who was in Portugal. Nobody in the house slept that night.
"It was like suddenly being hit on the head with a stone. All I remember is that the next day my neighbour told me she had heard me screaming and thought something terrible must have happened. I don't remember any of that."
Today, Freywald knows more about how her son died. Speed and an overtaking manoeuvre were factors in the crash. But the family had to wait months for those answers.
"At the beginning, we weren't told anything. The police only told us that this and that had happened. In reality, we found almost everything out through the media and social media", the mother of four recalls.
The family began searching for information themselves. Some of Freywald's daughters, who were still at secondary school, came across videos on social media showing the minibus carrying their brother engulfed in flames.
It was not until March that Americo's family were able to see the official police report through their lawyer. For Freywald, however, there can be no real sense of justice for her son or those he left behind.
"There's nobody left. Who are you supposed to seek justice from?", she says.
She notes it was only after receiving explanations from the National Association of Road Traffic Victims (AVR) that the family began to understand the legal situation more clearly. But that brought little relief.
While insurers discuss the value of the minibus destroyed in the crash, Freywald is left asking a very different question: what value can be placed on the life of her son, who was 26 when he died?
Some members of the family are still receiving support from Omega 90. Freywald says they also tried to find psychiatric help after the crash, but waiting lists were prohibitively long.
Talking to people outside the family about what happened can help, she says, but there is also a constant fear of burdening others with their grief.
"You don't want to keep bothering people with it either. What good does it do to keep talking about the same thing? So you keep to yourselves. We're here together at home and we talk about it among ourselves."
Asked how she is doing one year after her son's death, Freywald answers only indirectly.
People still approach her about the crash without knowing what actually happened, while online she continues to encounter comments from strangers offering opinions on the case.
"Those are things that get to you – that really, really hurt", she says. She has similarly little patience for phrases such as "that's life".
"That drives me mad, because no, that isn't life. Life isn't supposed to be like this", she says.
The family, she adds, has had to endure false claims, hurtful comments, and considerable hostility in the year since the accident.
A speed camera now stands near the place where Americo died.
Freywald welcomes the fact that speeds are now being monitored on the N15, but believes drivers still travel too fast on straight stretches such as the road between Heiderscheid and Feulen "because people aren't paying attention and they're stressed".
Whether a speed camera would have prevented her son's death can never be known.
What remains for Americo's mother is the loss, the grief, and the knowledge that a dangerous situation on the road ended the lives of five people, leaving dozens of relatives and friends to live with the consequences for the rest of their lives.
