text: As a teenager he tried three times, unsuccessfully, to defect from Cuba, once spending a month in Cuban jail. He finally escaped to Mexico on his fourth attempt, saving his mother from drowning on their boat trip over.
  He and his mother were then reunited with his father in Tampa, Florida where he had fled two years earlier.
  But Fernandez's transition from his life in Cuba was difficult. Baseball helped him acclimate to his new American life.
  After starting at Alonso High School in Tampa, speaking almost no English, Fernandez steered the baseball team to two state championships.
  He was drafted by the Marlins in 2011 at 20 years old and named National League Rookie of the Year in 2013.
  The Miami Herald reported his grandmother, a loyal supporter, often stood on her roof in Cuba during his games to listen to the sports radio broadcast as her grandson played.
  Players and fans described him as enthusiastic, energetic and charismatic. Many Cubans from Miami's Latin community, felt that the player embodied their own struggles.
  Miguel Garay, 78, a Miamian who came from Cuba's Pinar del Rio said: "His story was our story.
  "There's such a great tradition of baseball in Cuba and he embodied it better than anyone."
  After undergoing surgery in 2014 for a torn elbow ligament Fernandez became a US citizen in 2015, where he gave the keynote speech at his citizenship ceremony.
  He said: "This is one of my important accomplishments. I'm an American citizen now - I'm one of them. I consider myself now to be free."
  Fernandez was described as an "avid fisherman" and was aboard a friend's boat when the vessel hit a jetty, causing it to capsize.
  He had revealed recently that his girlfriend was pregnant.
  Marlins President David Samson said at a news conference: "When you talk about tragedy like this there are no words that come to mind.
  "There is prayer and thought toward his family and his soon to be born daughter. You recognize how precious life is."
target: Jose Fernandez, the talented 24-year-old baseball star who died in a boat crash on Sunday, was heralded by baseball commissioner Rob Manfred as one of the game's "great young stars".