Tape Reveals Final Minutes of Woman Killed in Chase

Friends and family say the final terrifying moments of Candace Wertz’s life followed five years of abuse from the boyfriend suspected of using his car to push hers in front of a freight train.

“It’s so horrible that no one was able to get to her in time to help,” said Tammy Wertz, Candace Wertz’s sister-in-law. “But something should have been done about this guy a long time ago. . . . She tried to get away from him and she just couldn’t.”

On Saturday, several sources revealed the contents of Wertz’s frantic 911 call made before she was struck by the train Thursday night.

Driving her car at high speeds through a residential neighborhood, Wertz grabbed her cell phone and desperately told a 911 operator to send police because her ex-boyfriend was chasing her.

With the shrieking of tires coming to a halt in the background, Wertz told the operator that she had a protective order against the man pursuing her, but that it had expired.

The roar of three giant crashes then overwhelmed Wertz’s voice and she screamed something about the window cracking. Finally, the phone went dead.

“Her boyfriend was banging into her car as she was talking. It sounded like he took off her side mirror,” Eric Olena, assistant director of the 911 center, said in Saturday’s Reading Eagle. “She sounded panicky. You could tell it was serious.”

Wertz, 20, had stopped at the railroad crossing to let the train pass and was just blocks away from a police station near Reading, about 50 miles northwest of Philadelphia.

Everyone in Wertz’s car--her son, John Michael Cortez, 2; Cynthia Jacques, 22; and Jacques’ daughter Allissa, 2--were killed in the crash.

Carlos Angel Diaz Santiago, 22, was arrested Friday and charged with four counts of murder and aggravated assault.

Another dispatcher who heard a tape of the call said Wertz never gave enough detail for police to locate her.

The tape of the five minute conversation reveals that the two women in the car were trying to calm their crying children. Police believe the crashes heard on the tape are Santiago pushing Wertz’s car onto the train track. A scream follows, then the phone goes silent.

Eileen Myers, 65, who owns a coffee shop in the shopping center beneath Wertz’s apartment, said she felt Wertz had been in mortal danger for months.

“It’s one of those things where you wished you had known what to do, but there weren’t any easy answers,” Myers said.