'I crossed 49 states to find closure after friend's death'

Just months after losing his friend in a shooting in the United States, Ash Carter packed a memory book, jumped into an SUV and started driving across America.

Tristan Torry died in November last year after being shot at his home in North Carolina.

The news came as a great shock to his Isle of Man school friend Ash, who had spoken to him hours earlier.

He said he had been "speaking to him nearly every single day for hours online for quite a while, literally to the day he died".

Tristan and Ash met at Castle Rushen High School in 2011, where their friendship developed and endured, despite the transatlantic gap between them when Tristan moved back to the US in 2013.

Ash, who is now 28, said: "He was charismatic, he was confident and he was kind of a Renaissance guy - he was good at anything he touched."

After Tristan's death, Ash began hearing from people his friend had met across America.

It was then that the idea of travelling there "clicked", he said, adding: "It would feel wrong not to go meet them."

He carried with him a book started by friends on the Isle of Man, filled with handwritten memories of Tristan, and along the way he asked others to add their own tributes.

The journey began in Tristan's home state of North Carolina before stretching through New Hampshire, Florida and Texas, where Ash met a number of Tristan's friends.

As a former truck driver, Ash said he was no stranger to driving thousands of miles alone and he recalled moments on the road when Tristan's presence felt especially close.

Driving through Tornado Alley at night, surrounded by violent storms, he remembered riding out a hurricane with Tristan years earlier in North Carolina.

"I was so calm during those times," he said, adding: "I thought, this is the kind of stuff he would have loved."

And the further north he travelled, the more isolated the journey became.

In Alaska and the Arctic, temperatures plunged to -40C as he drove hundreds of miles without seeing another person.

"The more isolated I got, the more I had clear thoughts," he said, adding that those were the "moments I felt closest to Tristan".

"Every mile I went, there was closure along the way," he explained.

But amid the grief came another life-changing moment; weeks into his journey he learnt his girlfriend back home was pregnant.

"I felt a bond over the Atlantic just over a phone call… what an amazing thing," he said.

While there had "been a lot of grief", Ash said he was excited to carry Tristan's memory and "move forward".

"It's not about replacing," he said, adding: "Everything moves forward, but everything stays too."

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