Carly Lonnborg's parents grieve her death in fatal drag race

Their fingers intertwined, Carly Lonnborg’s mother and father cried together about the “never-ending pain” over a daughter who was torn from their lives too soon, one of five Farmingdale teenagers killed in a drag race on a Mother’s Day weekend.

“Every day that I leave work and I’m on my way home, I cry because I know I’m going to the door and she’s not there,” said her mother, Sandy Lonnborg, tissue in one hand. “She would greet me every time I came through the door, it didn’t matter how many friends she had over. She’d run downstairs and come right to the door and tell me how much she missed me. ‘I love you, Mom. Do you need anything?’ ”

“You hear the school bus and I start losing it,” said John Lonnborg, wiping tears.

At a relative’s Babylon home, the couple spoke ahead of Friday’s sentencing of Cory Gloe, 19, who in March posted social media comments that mocked the justice system — the same day he pleaded guilty to the May 10, 2014, crash in return for six months in jail.

Gloe ignored a chance to get back on the straight path, she said, so on Friday, she wants the judge to hand down tougher consequences: “You can’t just get up and walk away from something like this.”

Authorities said Gloe, now 19, goaded Tristan Reichle, 17, into a street race in Farmingdale before Reichle lost control and crashed into a separate vehicle in oncoming traffic, seriously injuring its two occupants and killing everyone in his car: Carly Lonnborg, 14, Noah Francis, 15, Cody Talanian, 17, and Jesse Romero, 18.

In a half-hour interview, the Lonnborgs spoke of how video games and NASCAR racing have desensitized youths to dangers, the pain of seeing her daughters’ friends coming back from a prom and the impact of youthful offender sentences on teenagers’ actions.

But most of all, they poured out stories of Carly. She jogged 5 miles to take care of her grandmother, hurt in a fall. She cooked for her mother every Mother’s Day since she was a toddler — grapes and eggs the first time. She had drafted plans to expand their home so she, her future husband and their six children could live there with her parents.

“She cared more about other people than herself,” Sandy Lonnborg said.

At times, the parents chuckled about their daughter, but they mostly wept as they wondered how all of Carly’s hopes were gone in a blink.

“I wish to God somebody in that car had lived,” the father said. “I can’t seem to get to the bottom of what really happened.”