Relatives, Fiance and Strangers Mourn Loss

The Christmas tree in Lizett Quinonez’s living room glistened with lights Tuesday as relatives mourned her death and that of her 16-year-old sister, Claudia, killed hours earlier when their car was struck by a stolen vehicle pursued by police.

“It’s so hard, especially on Christmas Eve,” said Mario Zavala, Lizett’s fiance. The couple were expecting a child in June.

“It is still a shock to know what has happened,” he said. “I just know she is not suffering.”

Like Zavala, other relatives fought back tears as they recalled the sisters’ lives, cut short as they took a break from wrapping presents early Tuesday morning and went out to pick up food at a restaurant.

“They were busy doing the wrapping all night and got hungry,” said the sisters’ cousin, Marco Gonzalez. “It doesn’t make sense.”

The sisters were two of 11 siblings. Lizett moved to Orange County three years ago from Guadalajara, Mexico, and worked as a caregiver for an elderly man, Gonzalez said. “She liked to help people--that’s the kind of person she was,” he said.

She was three months pregnant at the time of the accident and was looking forward to becoming a mother, relatives said. She and Zavala were especially excited after her first ultrasound exam, they said.

“They were going to go to Mexico so he could meet her parents and set a date for the wedding,” Gonzalez said. “They planned to marry next year after the baby was born.”

Claudia Quinonez lived in Guadalajara but had been in California for the last three months to care for her ailing grandmother in Oxnard. The teen had planned to fly back to Mexico in January, relatives said.

The sisters will be buried in Mexico, relatives said.

At the small Cerritos Avenue apartment that Lizett shared with three relatives, neatly wrapped gifts rested in the corner of the living room Tuesday night as neighbors quietly paid their respects and brought the family covered plates of food.

At the crash site, friends and strangers stopped through the evening to pray and to leave mementos at a makeshift shrine.

Through his grief, Zavala expressed little bitterness toward the driver of the car that crashed into his fiancee’s, saying only: “That guy doesn’t have any common sense.”

Also contributing to this report were Times correspondent Mimi Ko Cruz and staff writer Geoff Boucher.