Son of electrocuted Good Samaritan: Mother was ‘always trying to help someone’

The son of a Burbank woman who was electrocuted Wednesday when she tried to save a crash victim in Valley Village called his mother a hero.

David Aguilar, 21, said when he got a call about 8:45 p.m. Wednesday that his mother, Irma Zamora, had been electrocuted, he went to Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center, where his stepfather “was a mess.”

He also saw his mother lying in a hospital bed, where she looked “just peaceful.”

Zamora -- who had been a longtime Glendale resident until moving to Burbank about six years ago -- was heroic, brave, strong, “always tried her hardest to get whatever she wanted” and was “always trying to help someone,” Aguilar said Thursday outside his apartment in Burbank.

“The fact that my mom died being a hero, I am just so proud of her,” he said.

The fact that she died trying to save someone else, he added, didn’t surprise him.

“The fact that she died in the process is what shocks me,” Aguilar said.

Zamora was electrocuted after she ran toward the wrecked SUV and stepped into an electrified pool of water that had been created by a spewing hydrant and a downed light pole at Magnolia and Ben avenues in Valley Village.

She was electrocuted by what firefighters estimate was 4,800 volts of electricity.

Zamora’s husband also reached the water and was shocked, though not as badly, Jaime Moore, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department, told The Times.

He had to be restrained from trying to rescue his wife, Moore said.

“By the time we came, the husband was screaming” for his wife, said Sue Kochoo, a neighbor who also hurried to the scene after hearing the crash. Kochoo said she and a friend would have also run into the water had someone not yelled at them to stop.

Kochoo said the electrified pool grew for several minutes. Zamora and another woman were in the middle, one on top of the other.

Rescue crews had to pull them from the water using a 6-foot pole with hooks and a handle that doesn’t conduct electricity, Moore said.

In all, six people were injured, and two died.

That night, Aguilar said his mother and stepfather had gone to a restaurant on Ventura Boulevard in anticipation of a family trip to Disney World the next day.

They were scheduled to return Sunday afternoon.

“It just doesn’t feel like home anymore at all,” Aguilar said.

RELATED:

Witness describes chaotic scene after two women electrocuted

Good Samaritan electrocuted in Valley Village was Burbank resident

-- Veronica Rocha at Times Community News, with Sam Quinones and Rebecca Trounson at the Los Angeles Times

Follow Veronica on Google+ and Twitter: @VeronicaRochaLA