Aftershock: Families, employees struggle to deal with daycare van deaths

SULLIVAN CITY — The snapshots in Veronica Aleman’s photo albums say more than condolences ever could.

Flipping through picture after picture, the director of La Fuente Adult Day Care in Sullivan City stared down at seven smiling faces donning costumes, enjoying parties and splashing at the beach — seven faces Aleman will never see again.

On Monday, a daycare van carrying 10 passengers from Rio Grande City collided with a Pontiac Grand Am and rolled over on its way to Sullivan City. Seven people died in the crash, which left bodies and the victims’ personal belongings strewn across the roadway.

As she paged through remembrances of happier times, Aleman struggled to contain her grief for the three men and four women who lost their lives in her company’s care. They include:

>> Leopoldo “Polo” Teran, 80, who jokingly cautioned daycare workers that the facility’s pool room was no place for nice ladies.

>> Isidro Vela, 86, and his wife, Maria “Crucita” Vela, 79, a social couple that maintained friendships with many of their fellow victims.

>> Guadalupe Morado, 84, a former Starr County courts employee whose family members said she took pride in decorating her home for every major holiday.

>> Alberta Peña, 78, a devoted mother of 10 whose daughters took her to attend regular church services and daycare functions.

>> Elita Navarro, 60, whose son is currently serving in Iraq and hopes to make it back in time for her funeral.

>> Juan Perez, 50, who had once suffered from epileptic fits but hadn’t had an attack since he started attending La Fuente.

“This was like their home,” Aleman said. “We had so many memories. It’s a tragedy.”

‘It was horrible’

The day after Starr County’s deadliest vehicle accident in years, authorities continued to investigate the crash site while victims’ friends and family prepared to bury their dead.

La Fuente held services for three religious denominations and offered rides to clients wishing to attend the funeral viewings for four of their deceased friends.

But the drive to the funeral home in Rio Grande City took daycare vans past the intersection that erupted in chaos only 24 hours earlier.

Aleman stared blankly out her car window as she passed state troopers surveying what remained of the crash site. She could still hear her clients’ screams.

“We had to see the bodies,” she said. “We had to identify them. It was horrible.”

According to the preliminary accident report, the driver of a white Pontiac Grand Am drove into U.S. Highway 83’s intersection with Familia Street just after 8:30 a.m. Although a preliminary report indicates she stopped at the stop sign, she failed to yield to the oncoming daycare van.

The van struck the Grand Am’s front left side and flipped over into the median. Three of the van’s passengers were thrown onto the highway and died instantly. Four more died of injuries sustained in the vehicle.

But all Mandy Guerra saw when she arrived at the crash site was mayhem.

The granddaughter of deceased van passenger Alberta Peña drove out to the scene moments after hearing the news from family members.

Amid the whirring lights of police cars and the mangled remains of the daycare van, three yellow tarps lying on the roadway caught her eye.

Somehow, she knew her grandmother was under one of them.

“When I saw her lying there on the roadway, I snapped,” said Guerra, who collapsed into screams, relying on two family members to support her. “I knew it was her.”

She only realized the magnitude of what had happened, however, as more grieving family members arrived at the scene. Handbags, eyeglasses and broken shoes mixed with shattered windows and wreckage from the vehicles.

Cries for help inside the van could be heard from yards away, witnesses said.

Once she regained consciousness, van driver Magaly Escobar kicked out the window with her feet in an effort to save her surviving charges, according to daycare staff. But as glass shards cut into her flesh, she realized she could do little to help.

Firefighters eventually cut off the vehicle’s roof to rescue survivors. Once inside, they found that at least four of the passengers had not been wearing seat belts, a factor that state troopers say contributed to the death toll.

‘This is going to mess up her life forever’

Elita Arevalo, of Garciasville, spotted her granddaughter’s white Grand Am from the road.

Leticia Najera, 20, and her 1-year-old son, Daniel, left Arevalo’s house moments earlier to spend the day in Rio Grande City. The pregnant South Texas College student hoped to spend quality time with her son before another child disrupted her household’s equilibrium.

But within minutes of their departure, Arevalo started receiving phone calls from friends.

“I bolted out to the car in my tattered house dress,” she said. “I looked like a crazy person.”

When she arrived at the scene, Arevalo found Najera twisted and trapped inside the car and bleeding from the forehead.

“I looked into her eyes and there was nothing there,” she said. “I kept saying ‘Letty, Letty, don’t leave us.’”

Emergency responders had already removed Daniel. The sight of his toppled and unlatched car seat sent chills down his great-grandmother’s spine.

As Arevalo determined that her great-grandson had only sustained minor injuries, her thoughts turned to Najera and her unborn child. She rushed to McAllen Medical Center hoping to learn more about their condition.

Doctors told her Najera and the fetus were fine. But Arevalo now had to decide how to tell her granddaughter about the wreck’s tragic toll.

“I had to tell her one person died, and she cried,” Arevalo said. “When I told her seven were dead, she lost it. She doesn’t remember anything.”

State troopers said that they plan to charge Najera with seven counts of criminally negligent homicide, but as of Tuesday afternoon she had not been arrested.

Arevalo feels authorities are making an already tragic situation worse by pointing fingers in what she describes as just a horrific accident.

“She’s just 20 years old,” she said. “This is going to mess up her life forever.”

New policies

Norma Chapa, meanwhile, can’t find it in herself to lay any blame at all. As the director of La Fuente’s second facility in Palmview, she spent Tuesday dealing with too much grief to consider handling anger.

“We don’t have any hate against her,” she said. “I know she did wrong, but she’s a human being, too. She’s got to be suffering.”

Directors at both centers advised their clients Tuesday that they would be required to wear seat belts in company vans from now on — a safety precaution, Chapa says, they have always urged on their clients.

But for Sullivan City director Aleman, the photo albums will always remind her of Monday’s loss.

“They were all somebody’s mother, their brother, their father,” she said. “Each and every client had something special about them.”

Thinking about them reduces her to tears, but she resolved herself to push the chaotic scene from her thoughts. She had too many other clients to console.

“The more they hear it’s OK to let go,” she said, “the more they can heal.”

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Jeremy Roebuck covers courts, law enforcement and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4437.