The family of brothers and sisters had always been tightly knit, living, working and playing close together in Chicago`s western suburbs and helping each other settle in a new country.
First their father died, then tragedy struck in a midnight crash on a Texas highway as family members were returning from the funeral in Mexico. Now the family is talking about how to put their lives back together after the loss of nine more family members.
Texas authorities described the traffic accident Sunday night as the worst in that state this year. The crash involved one of two cars carrying the brothers and sisters, along with their spouses and children, back from Mexico.
Seven family members sat in two El Campo, Tex., motel rooms Monday, emotionally drained but buoyed by physical stamina.
”We`re waiting for our other relatives. We don`t know what we`re going to do yet,” Maria Carillo of Franklin Park said in a telephone interview from El Campo. Other family members were flying in from Chicago to be with them.
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”I don`t know what happened, how it happened.”
A local Catholic priest stopped by to offer condolences and say prayers as the family members reflected on the funeral they had just attended and the services that lie ahead.
Still others waited back home in Cicero and Franklin Park, watching in horror at the replays of the accident scene on television. ”We still can`t believe it,” said Debby Vazquez, whose brother, Greg, is married to one of the sisters who was not involved in the crash.
”All my family knew everybody. Everybody lives close by. We used to have cookouts all the time. Everybody stayed at everybody else`s house, hanging around with each other.
”When the people that are alive come back, it`s going to be real difficult. We`re just going to have to sit down and talk it out.”
Already her brother is considering adopting the 7-year-old boy who was the sole survivor of the 10 persons in the station wagon that crashed, she said.
Carillo said the two cars started the trip in Cerralvo, Mexico, early Sunday afternoon.
Troopers for the Texas Department of Public Safety said a few minutes before midnight, as the two cars were northbound on U.S. Hwy. 59 at Hillje, Texas, 64 miles southwest of Houston, the 1985 station wagon, believed to be traveling at about 50 miles an hour, swerved onto the right shoulder and rammed into the rear of a legally parked tractor-trailer, said Michael Cox, a department spokesman.
”The investigators found no skid marks and believe the driver had fallen asleep,” Cox said. ”No one had seat belts on.”
The driver, Alvaro Gil, 22, a landscaper from Cicero, and five of the car`s passengers were pronounced dead at the scene. Two more were pronounced dead at El Campo Memorial Hospital. A 4-year-old girl died in Hermann Hospital in Houston Monday morning.
Texas authorities identified the dead as:
Gil; his wife, Juanita 26; and their daughter, Christina, 3, of 1310 S. 50th Ave., Cicero.
Luis Mariano Vega, 29, a maintenance man at the Matsushita Industrial Co. in Franklin Park, and his wife, Laura, 28, of Franklin Park. Also, Maria Rodriguez, 36, of Houston, and her three daughters, Gracie, 10; Melissa, 4;
and Laura, 2.
The only survivor was Louis Rodriguez, 7, who was listed in stable condition in El Campo Memorial Hospital. The Rodriguezes were planning to move from Texas to join their relatives in Chicago.