19-year-old daughter of Michael Lewis, Tabitha Soren killed in California crash with friend: ‘Our hearts are so broken’
The teenage daughter of “Moneyball” author Michael Lewis and photographer Tabitha Soren died this week in a head-on vehicle collision on a highway in Truckee, Calif.
Dixie Lewis, 19, and her boyfriend Ross Schultz, 20, were traveling northbound on State Route 89 near Lake Tahoe when their 2014 Ford Fusion collided with a Freightliner, authorities and her family confirmed.
“We loved her so much and are in a kind of pain none of us has experienced,” Lewis said in a statement to Berkeleyside, which first reported the tragedy.
“She loved Ross, with whom she died. She loved to live and our hearts are so broken they can’t find the words to describe the feeling. Her mother, Tabitha, and I, and her brother Walker and sister Quinn are going to find ways for her memory to live in her absence,” the best-selling author who also wrote “The Big Short” said.
The cause of the deadly accident remains under investigation, the California Highway Patrol said.
“For reasons still under investigation, the northbound vehicle entered into the southbound lane of State Route 89 south and struck the southbound vehicle head on,” the incident report states.
Dixie Lewis and Shultz were pronounced dead at the scene. The Placer County Coroner confirmed Shultz as the decedent driver on Friday.
The 45-year-old driver of the truck sustained minor injuries, the CHP said.
Investigators have asked anyone who may have witnessed the crash to contact the CHP’s office in Truckee.
The only witness so far was a driver behind the truck, and investigators are “troubled” because the Ford Fusion hit the truck “squarely” head-on, without much evidence of an evasive “reaction,” a CHP source told the Daily News on Friday.
The report said “no alcohol or drug use is suspected.”
Schultz and Lewis both were accomplished scholar athletes, Berkeleyside reported.
Lewis graduated from Berkeley High in 2020 and recently finished her freshman year at Pomona College, where she was on the softball team and planned to major in neuroscience, the outlet reported.
Schultz was a student at Cal Poly Pomona and was a member of Berkeley High’s two-time NCS Championship soccer team.
“There is nothing Dixie wanted more in the world than to be on Pomona’s campus and play with her pals on the softball team for Coach (JoAnne) Ferguson,” Soren said in a statement included in a Pomona College letter obtained by Berkeleyside.
“It was her dream and the culmination of so much training that she kept up with all through lockdown. Her virtual Pomona classmates helped her navigate the two COVID semesters and we will be forever grateful to them for forging bonds with our daughter through mere screens,” Soren, who previously was an on-air reporter for MTV News in New York, said.
“As an athlete, Dixie quickly drew our attention due to her talents on the field — but once she joined our team, it was her warm spirit, positive energy and big smile that won our hearts,” Ferguson said in a statement.
“Dixie made a lasting positive impact on our team this year, and she will forever be part of the Sagehen softball family,” the coach said.
