Pain of 8 Deaths Lingers : Relatives Still Feel the Shock a Year After County’s Worst Traffic Accident

A year has passed and Abel Mendez still can’t shake the grief.

“I remember when they told me the news, I just exploded with emotion,” Mendez said.

When Pastor Octavio Valentin drove a church van through the intersection of Flower Street and Civic Center Drive that fateful Sunday a year ago today, no one knew how a fatal traffic collision would forever change the lives of its occupants and their families.

Eight people died and 11 more were injured when the church van was struck by a pickup, which in turn was hit by a BMW, in Orange County’s worst traffic accident.

Mendez lost a sister, Rutilia Oliva, 31; two nephews, Carlos, 5, and Daniel, 2; and his 16-year-old daughter.

“I remember how my daughter and I would talk together. You know, about school and things. She was my oldest,” he said.

The pickup’s driver, Fernando Hernandez Flores, 24, who fled the scene, has eluded Santa Ana police for 12 months. He remains a fugitive with an arrest warrant for felony hit and run. If caught, he could face eight counts of felony vehicle manslaughter, said Santa Ana Police Sgt. Art Echternacht.

“We’re really not sure where he is,” Echternacht said last week. “We’re trying to pin down locations of where he might be.”

Hernandez was seen after the crash in Santa Ana stumbling out of the truck he had borrowed from friends. Bleeding from a head gash he suffered in the accident, witnesses said he just walked away.

The Orange District Attorney did not file criminal charges against the driver of the BMW, Kurt Sense of Santa Ana. Sense and his wife, Susan, have been named in several civil lawsuits filed by victims and their relatives.

The truck’s registered owner, David Mendoza of Santa Ana, told police that he loaned Hernandez his truck to go on an errand. Later, Mendoza was contacted by Hernandez’s cousin, who said Hernandez was involved in a serious traffic accident.

Mendoza told investigators that he saw a bump on Hernandez’s forehead, adding that Hernandez told him that he was sorry for the accident and that he would try to make it up to him “whether he was in Mexico or not.”

Police checked with his employer in Riverside. They interviewed his friends, but still have not found Hernandez. They also considered splashing his face on television, Echternacht said. “But that could backfire and spook him into running if he’s here in the U.S.”

Talk of Hernandez gets Mendez’s blood boiling. “I wish I knew where he was,” he said.

Carlos Oliva, 28, Mendez’s brother, who lost his wife and the child she was carrying, and two boys, remains haunted by the memories.

“He’s one of those people who cannot cry,” Mendez said of his brother. “When he first heard the news, it overwhelmed him. He started shaking, then trembled. His eyes snapped shut and he lost control. We had to take him to a doctor.”

“To this day, he still can’t cry over this. It bothers him a lot,” Mendez said.

After the accident, some victims’ relatives angrily spoke about Valentin, who had installed homemade rear seats without seat belts to ferry more parishioners to church. And, when the Orange County district attorney’s office decided not to prosecute the pastor for modifying the seats, it drew mixed reactions among the parish members.

“One of the ironic things was that this was one big family before the accident,” said Valentin’s attorney, A. Bennett Combs of Santa Ana.

But even families come apart.

Valentin, who could not be reached for comment, said through his attorney that the congregation of Latino immigrants from Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico had suffered and gotten smaller.

“Pastor Valentin . . . is on his knees emotionally from this whole thing,” Combs said. “He had a green light when he went through the intersection, he was hit by the pickup truck, if the doors hadn’t flung open, many of the victims would have had only scratches.”

Some victims’ families just could not return to the church after the accident.

“What’s done is done. Valentin can’t be held responsible for the deaths of all those people,” Mendez said.

But church members who lost loved ones in the crash have sued the church, Iglesia de Dios No Sectria Inc., (Non-Sectarian Church of God) in Santa Ana. Three lawsuits were filed against Valentin and the church, but a judge is seeking to consolidate the cases into one.

More than a dozen plaintiffs are seeking more than $1 million each in damages, medical expenses, burial costs and loss of financial support. Listed as defendants are Valentin, the church, David and Cristina Mendoza, the registered owners of the pickup, Hernandez, and the Senses, the registered owners of the BMW.

Originally, there was a question about insurance on the van and the church, said Richard A. Torres, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys in Santa Ana.

But “we have been formally informed that the church had coverage,” Torres said.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys have also discussed adding the City of Santa Ana and Ford Motor Co. to the list of defendants. New allegations would include that the van’s rear door had a faulty locking mechanism, an attorney in the case said.

Some survivors have remained loyal to the small church and to Valentin.

Rosa Castro, Mendez’s sister, said she and her brother had worked for years to bring seven of nine family members remaining in Guatemala to the United States.

Their sister Rutilia, who was killed in the crash, had sold her small house in the Guatemalan town of Villa Nueva to help pay the air fare to Tijuana, and a coyote, or smuggler, who helped them sneak across the U.S.-Mexico border.

“You have to understand that three times a week (Valentin) would pick us up and take us to church,” Castro said. “We are a family. If we need something, he helps us out. He’s always doing us favors.”

“Our pastor has told us in church that if God would have allowed him to trade places with those who died, he would have,” she said. “He wishes God had taken him instead of ‘his children.’ ”