Father Pleads for Help to Bury Children Who Died in Vehicle Crash

As authorities continued to investigate the cause of a crash that killed two Oxnard children, relatives of the victims pleaded Tuesday for financial help to bury the youngsters.

Virginia Alfaro, 13, and Alexis Alfaro, 11, were killed early Monday when a sport utility vehicle driven by their mother, Maria Guerrero, slammed into the rear of a parked semitrailer along Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. Authorities said Guerrero may have fallen asleep at the wheel.

Guerrero, 34, was in good condition Tuesday at UCLA Medical Center.

Her 12-year-old daughter, Andrea, was pronounced brain dead but was being kept on life support so her organs could be harvested, according to a nursing supervisor.

A fourth sibling, 9-year-old Luis Alfaro, escaped with moderate injuries. He was listed in good condition.

“I’d like to find an organization to bury the three children that I lost,” said Jose Luis Alfaro, 37, Guerrero’s ex-husband and the father of all four children. “I’d like help.”

Between them, Guerrero and Alfaro make $2,500 a month before taxes, according to court documents from their divorce. With hospital expenses mounting, relatives said the cost of burying the children presents a heavy load for a family that, during the best circumstances, struggles to get by.

“We are of very poor resources,” said Maria Black, Guerrero’s mother.

Guerrero was returning to Oxnard from visiting her family in Rosarito Beach in Mexico when the accident occurred.

From her hospital bed Tuesday, Guerrero said the last thing she remembered before the crash was that a red or brown car suddenly came up from behind, passed on the right and cut in front of her.

“It was like he was playing with me,” said Guerrero, wearing a neck brace and bearing deep gashes on her head.

Guerrero said that as she attempted to move into the right lane to get away from the car, she lost control of her vehicle and rear-ended the semitrailer. She told her mother, who was at her side Tuesday, that the next thing she remembered was waking up as she and her children were being plucked from the wreckage.

Guerrero told investigators she left Rosarito Beach about 3:30 a.m. Monday because she had to get to work by 8 a.m., said Det. Hugh Wahler of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Guerrero has been an instructor at an electronics assembly school in Oxnard for the past two years.

Authorities said she also told them about the red or brown car. But a witness out for an early morning walk told investigators she did not see another car at the time, Wahler said.

Investigators could find no skid marks to suggest Guerrero had braked to avoid either a passing car or the tractor-trailer that was parked legally to the side of the highway. The driver was asleep in the cab and was not injured.

Also, the angle at which Guerrero’s car struck the tractor-trailer “suggested she’d been driving down the right lane and the shoulder for quite a while,” Wahler said. “It wasn’t a last-minute swerve out of the way.”

The investigation is continuing.

The time of departure from Mexico that Guerrero gave police suggested she may have been speeding during portions of the trip, Wahler said. However, he added, there was no indication she was speeding at the time of the accident.

At the electronics school where Guerrero works, owner Leonardo Sabana said he was stunned by the losses suffered by one of his best employees.

“She loved her children; they were the most important thing in the world to her,” Sabana said. “It’s very difficult to imagine the tragic circumstances she is in.”

At the schools attended by the Alfaro children, psychologists were on alert in case students or teachers wanted to discuss the incident. The two older children attended Fremont Intermediate School, and the two younger siblings attended Sierra Linda Elementary.

They were by all accounts good kids, said Oxnard School District Supt. Richard Duarte.

“It’s a loss that’s hard to fathom,” Duarte said. “One day they are in school, enjoying life and looking forward to their future, and the next day they are taken from us.”

At the hospital Tuesday, Jose Luis Alfaro was contemplating a future weighted with sadness and pain.

He remembered how Virginia liked to study and go shopping and how Alexis liked playing soccer.

And he remembered Andrea as a natural-born athlete, as good at cheerleading as she was at playing softball and soccer.

He decided Tuesday to allow the hospital to transplant her organs.

Alfaro said he remembered, when he and Guerrero got divorced last fall, how his children worried about him.

“They didn’t want me to be alone,” he said. “And I felt that way as well toward them.”

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Times staff writer Margaret Talev contributed to this story.