Man in shock over loss of family

Ever since he moved his family into a home on the edge of El Monte, framing their lives against a backdrop of overpasses and a concrete riverbed, Stephen Groce had worried about the drivers that staged illegal car races on the bustling streets out front.

One of these nights, he figured, it’s not going to end well.

“This was a disaster waiting to happen,” he said Tuesday. “I just didn’t know it was going to happen to me.”

Groce had paid little mind to the crash site he passed Monday on his way home from work. When he got home, his neighbors asked him about his wife. His daughter had a fever, he told them; his wife had taken both children to see the doctor. They told him as gently as they could: Go over and talk to the cops.

Groce’s wife, Dora Groce, 41; his son, Robert, 8; and his daughter, Catherine, 4, were killed as Dora Groce pulled the family’s Nissan Altima out of the Brookside Mobile Country Club onto Elliott Avenue about 5:40 p.m. The mobile home park is in the heart of the San Gabriel Valley, about 14 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.

On Tuesday, Groce stood in his living room, surrounded by framed family photos and toy cars, too bewildered to comprehend what had happened, much less to figure out what to do now.

“I’m a 44-year-old guy,” he said. “You’ve got an 8-year-old boy and a 4-year-old daughter . . . . “ His voice trailed off. “You don’t have a lot else to look forward to. They become your life.”

Police said the car was broadsided at Elliott and Parkway Drive, an intersection with stop signs on every corner.

“It was a fierce crash,” said El Monte Police Det. Ralph Batres. “The explosion that resulted was immense.”

Dora Groce’s sedan was pushed about 50 feet and burst into flames, rendering it unrecognizable. She appears to have died on impact, but authorities fear the children died in the fire. Several other cars were struck, though less violently, and five other people were injured.

El Monte police on Tuesday identified the racers as Robert Canizalez, 19, and Martin Morones, 21.

Canizalez, allegedly the driver of the red convertible Ford Mustang that struck the family’s car, was injured in the accident, though not seriously, and detained at the scene, apparently by witnesses. He was charged Tuesday with three counts of murder and was being held in lieu of $3 million bail.

Morones was still being sought Tuesday night. He was charged in absentia with three counts of murder and one felony count of hit-and-run, Batres said. His Honda was found about a block from the accident scene.

“It’s the worst day of your life -- times three,” Stephen Groce said. “These guys took my life away from me just because they wanted to act stupid.”

Both men live in the same 450-unit mobile home park as the Groce family. Groce, who works as an inspector for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said he did not know them.

All day Tuesday, friends and relatives, even friends of his wife that he’d never met dropped by the family home.

“I don’t know what to say,” one of his colleagues said as he walked through the door of the Groce family’s home. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

The men hugged.

“You OK?” Groce asked him.

El Monte Mayor Ernest Gutierrez said the crash provided another example of why street racing is dangerous and should be reported to police.

Neighbors said it was common for drivers to speed along the road in front of the mobile home park and near a local high school, but police said there had been only three calls reporting speeding in the area in the last nine months.

One visitor to the Groce house, family friend Nora Torrez, grabbed some of Groce’s family photos and said she would use them to print fliers demanding speed bumps. Neighbors said they’d tried that before, to no avail.

Stephen Groce searched too, for the right reaction to the accident.

“I sit in here and I think I should be doing something,” he said.

But there was nothing to do. They were gone: Robert, the prankster. Curly-haired Catherine, a daddy’s girl. And Dora, the woman he was so sure about he married her seven weeks after they met.

He was left wrestling with Dora’s legacy. She was an avid Christian, he said, and would have preached forgiveness if she’d been faced with a similar tragedy.

“She would just tell them, ‘God bless you,’ ” he said. “I can’t do that.”

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