Eden Miranda, a 9-year-old boy, is in critical condition after a crash in Lodi, Calif., killed five of his family members: Stephanie Miranda, 4; Jose Miranda, 5; Irving Miranda, 11; Luis Miranda, 30; and Vivian Rodriguez.
Police told Fox-40 that Miranda is in critical condition at the UC Davis Medical Center. The five who were killed were his brothers and sisters, his father, and his pregnant mother.
“The guy that provoked the accident didn’t die. Why them and not the guy that made the accident? It’s just not fair for them,” said family cousin Yuli Campo, reported Fox.
Witnesses to the crash said that the driver of the other vehicle, a SUV, involved in the accident may have been talking on his cell phone before the collision. According to other eyewitness accounts, the vehicle was going 90 miles per hour.
“This could have happened to anybody and stop driving with your cell phones. I see it everyday … and it could have been avoided,” Marilee Pennino of Lodi told the station at a vigil for the family.
During a vigil, friend Sabien Tafoya lit a candle for Irving Miranda.
“He was smart,” Tafoya told the Lodi News-Sentinel. “He was funny. He always made all his friends laugh. He was a fun, cool kid to be around.”
Mariana Carine Tyler, a spokeswoman with the Mexican Consulate, told the Stockton Record that some of the family members who were killed were Mexican citizens.
Witness Erin Andrews told KCRA-TV that she saw the SUV that allegedly caused the crash swerving around cars.
“I approach and see this big old pile of mess, children laying out in the street, on the curb and bodies everywhere and vehicles totally messed up,” another witness, Wesley Ruyle, said.
Lodi is a city of 60,000 in Central California, located around 35 miles south of Sacramento.
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