George Strait's daughter, Jenifer Lyn, died in a tragic car wreck 36 years ago this week

Thirty-six years ago this week, a deadly car crash outside of San Marcos changed the life of a country legend.

Just before midnight on June 25, 1986, George Strait's daughter, 13-year-old Jenifer Lyn Strait, died in a car crash. She was riding in a Ford Mustang with some friends when the driver took a turn too quickly and lost control of the vehicle.

The Mustang flipped into a ditch, and Jenifer, who wasn't wearing a seatbelt, was ejected out of an open window and died at the scene. The crash occurred south of San Marcos, just miles from the Strait family residence. 

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The two other passengers in the car — 16-year-old William McDonald and 17-year-old Joseph Robbins — were uninjured.

The driver, 18-year-old Gregory Allen, was initially charged with criminally negligent homicide, but Hays County prosecutors dropped the charges, according to a 1987 Houston Chronicle article. 

Strait stopped giving interviews after the incident, despite the fact that it could have harmed his career.

“I just didn’t feel like talking about it, so I quit … I did want to keep singing, absolutely,” Strait said at the time in a rare interview with The New Yorker. “But I was at the point where I’m [like], ‘Alright, if this is going to cost me my career, then so be it, but it’s the only way I’m going to be able to cope with it.’"

The Strait family created the Jenifer Strait Memorial Foundation, which donates to various non-profits such as the Boys & Girls Club of San Antonio in her honor.

It is also rumored that his 1988 hit "Baby Blue" is about his daughter.

taylor.pettaway@express-news.net