Toddler Run Down by Van in Yard Dies of Injuries; Motorist Is Charged : San Fernando: Her father was also killed in Sunday’s accident. The driver is suspected of having been intoxicated.

A 2-year-old San Fernando girl, whose father was killed when an allegedly drunk driver plowed into their front yard, has died of her injuries, and a Montebello shoe salesman was charged Tuesday with both deaths, authorities said.

The accident on Glenoaks Boulevard, which began with a noisy crash into a parked car, galvanized dozens of neighbors, who poured out of their homes to see what had happened, witnesses and investigators said. In a futile attempt to rescue their neighbor, Jose Hernandez, about 25 residents overturned the heavy, shoe-laden van that pinned him against his house, witnesses said. Others wrestled with driver Fabian Perez and held him until police arrived.

The distraught Perez told his captors in Spanish, “Mejor matame, mejor matame,” or “Better to kill me, better to kill me,” said Ignacio Berrera, one of three men who detained him after the accident Sunday.

On Tuesday, Perez, 25, was scheduled to be arraigned in San Fernando Municipal Court on two counts of vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and two counts of felony drunk driving, causing injury. If convicted, he faces a maximum of 13 years in state prison, which includes an additional year for injuring more than one victim, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Lori Dery.

Perez was held in lieu of $40,000 bail. San Fernando police described him as extremely remorseful and said he has no criminal record.

Meanwhile, relatives of Hernandez, a 41-year-old truck driver, made funeral arrangements for him and his daughter, Gloria, who died Monday afternoon at AMI Tarzana Regional Medical Center as about 50 members of her extended family kept a prayer vigil.

The family donated the girl’s organs for use in medical transplants “to keep their child alive and to help someone else,” a hospital spokeswoman said.

The accident happened about 7:45 p.m. Sunday as Hernandez was cleaning a walkway in his garden with a leaf blower, and his wife, Gloria, was sweeping behind him, she recalled Tuesday. Their youngest child, also named Gloria, was running back and forth between her father and Berrera, a tenant and friend of the family, Gloria Hernandez said.

Perez had been drinking beer at a friend’s house after selling shoes at the San Fernando Swap Meet, San Fernando Police Detective Robert Ordelheide said.

As he drove south in the 700 block of Glenoaks Boulevard, Perez rear-ended Berrera’s car, parked on the street, then continued into the Hernandez yard, Ordelheide said.

Berrera and other witnesses said Perez’s Dodge van plowed through a low, chicken-wire fence and tomato patch, struck young Gloria and then her father, dragging him to the house and pinning him against its northern wall.

Hernandez’s oldest child, 17-year-old Sandra, said she was in the house, about to take a shower, when the building shook from the van’s impact. “It felt like an earthquake,” Sandra said.

Two brothers, Jose Jr., 13, and Ricardo, 8, were playing in the neighborhood, Sandra said.

Gloria Hernandez said she heard the van strike Berrera’s car and before she knew it, it was hitting the house. Then she saw her husband, realized he was dead, and carried her fatally injured daughter into the house, she said.

Details of the accident remain under investigation by the California Highway Patrol, but San Fernando Detective Daniel Mena said Perez’s speed was estimated at 40 to 60 m.p.h.

Results of a test for Perez’s blood-alcohol level were not yet available, Ordelheide said.

A passenger in the van, 24-year-old Fidencio Rodriguez of Montebello, was questioned and released without charges, the investigators said.