Woman, 2 Sons Killed on Their Way to School

A pregnant woman and two of her young children were killed and her 3-year-old son critically injured Friday morning when a car plowed into them as they waited to cross a busy Boyle Heights intersection.

South Lorena Street was crowded with mothers walking their children to school about 7:40 a.m. when a blue van making an unprotected left turn crashed into an oncoming gray Nissan Maxima. The Maxima spun across the intersection onto the corner of Beswick Street, sending 29-year-old Analidia Villasenor and her children flying backward into the wrought-iron fence of a church.

Villasenor, who was four months pregnant, was killed instantly. Her sons Antonio Zepeda, 5, and Jose Zepeda, 13 months, died at the emergency room of County-USC Medical Center shortly afterward. David Zepeda, 3, remained there in serious but stable condition Friday, a hospital spokeswoman said.

The driver of the van, 63-year-old Rosalio Robles of Los Angeles, was booked on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter, police said. The driver of the car, 22-year-old Mario Ortega, was questioned and released.

“I’m so sorry,” a shaken Ortega said as he left the scene Friday with his arms scratched and bruised. “I don’t know what to say. I have a family, too.”

Horrified passersby, many of them neighborhood women pushing baby carriages, were stunned by the carnage. Witnesses said that right after the crash, they stood frozen, staring at the bloody children scattered across the sidewalk while the toddler, thrown from his stroller, wailed.

A truck driver got out of his cab and stripped off his jacket and shirt, covering the small bodies. The children’s father, Jose Oscar Zepeda, arrived soon afterward and tried to throw himself on the bodies, but police held him back, residents said.

As the word of the accident spread, the family’s friends rushed to the scene, many sobbing. Angry neighbors said pedestrians often have to dodge speeding traffic on the busy street, which is right off the Golden State Freeway.

“Cars come rushing down here to get onto the freeway,” said resident Norma Aceves, 40. “It’s so dangerous. We’ve asked for speed bumps, but nothing ever happens. Does someone else have to die?”

The deadly accident came just a week after a study by the Surface Transportation Policy Project named Los Angeles County as the most dangerous place in the state for pedestrians--especially children.

In response, this week the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors urged Gov. Gray Davis to approve legislation that would allocate $20 million for programs to increase safety for children walking to school. The board also approved a motion inviting cities and school districts to work together to improve pedestrian safety.

Los Angeles City Councilman Nick Pacheco, who visited the children’s grieving father Friday, said in the next few weeks he will hold a meeting with parents at Lorena Street School, a few blocks from the accident site, to discuss pedestrian safety. He also promised to talk to the city’s Department of Transportation about traffic on the busy thoroughfare.

“This, obviously, was a needless tragedy,” Pacheco said. “Too many of these incidents are happening. We need to examine the whole city policy on pedestrian safety.”

On Friday, a school district crisis team was on hand at the elementary school to counsel students, many of whom had passed the gruesome scene on their way to class, said Principal Janet Alsbrook. Meanwhile, shaken neighbors stood vigil by the bloodstained sidewalk as the coroner removed Villasenor’s body.

“She was such a good friend, a good mother,” said neighbor Agapito Barba, 63, who was across the street when the accident occurred. “She loved her children and loved walking them to school. It was one of her favorite things.”

Barba said he was about to take his grandson to school when Villasenor passed his house, taking her 5-year-old to kindergarten. “ ‘Good morning,’ she said,” he recalled. “ ‘I’ll see you at school.’ But she never made it.”

Lupe Alvarez, 27, said she was walking her son to school when she saw the body and realized it was her neighbor. She burst into tears, then rushed her son to school, where she saw many of his classmates crying.

“I’m so sad, I don’t know what to think,” said Alvarez as she cradled her 2-month-old daughter in her arms. “Today it was her, tomorrow it could be us. We have to stop this from happening again.”

Neighbors said Villasenor and Zepeda recently purchased a yellow stucco home on Opal Street, a block lined with well-tended bungalows.

Friends described the close-knit family, which emigrated from Jalisco, Mexico, about seven years ago, as loving and warm. Zepeda, a carpenter, was excited about fixing up his new house, while Villasenor, who cared for the children at home, was saving to buy a sewing machine. She talked proudly of her oldest son, a 13-year-old in junior high school and an altar boy at nearby Resurrection Church.

A fund has been established to assist with the burial of Villasenor and her sons. Donations can be sent to the Zepeda Family Fund, Washington Mutual Bank, 2201 W. Beverly Blvd., Montebello, CA 90640. For information, call (323) 728-0317.