LOS ANGELES — A 1-year-old girl is fighting for her life Thursday following a New Year’s Eve crash in the Harvard Park area of Los Angeles that left her mother, father and sister dead.
The crash occurred around 11:20 p.m. Sunday, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. Investigators said the speeding driver, identified as Issac Jordan Kahari, 22, was fleeing from an earlier hit-and-run collision when he ran a stop sign at 60th Place and Normandie Avenue, slamming into the family of four’s sedan.
LAPD Detective Ryan Moreno told reporters Tuesday the crash “was so violent” that it sent the family’s car careening through a street sign and a fence, coming to rest outside a nearby business. Moreno said some people who heard the crash described it as sounding like an “explosion.” He said several good Samaritans ran to the scene and “tried to do what they could.”
The father, identified by his daughter Angie on a GoFundMe page as Jose Manuel Pascagaza, 49, was pronounced dead at the scene, and his 5-year-old daughter Mia died at a hospital. The mother, Luisa Bernal, 26, who was in the front passenger seat, was hospitalized with major injuries and died on Tuesday, according to police and the GoFundMe page.
The other daughter, 1-year-old Hanna, whose birthday is next week, remained hospitalized but was showing signs of improvement, police said. According to the GoFundMe page created by Angie Dayana Pascagaza, Hanna is “recovering satisfactorily from this tragic accident.”
Angie Pascagaza wrote on the page that she is hoping to raise money so the bodies of her parents and sister can be returned to Colombia “to give them a Christian burial with the whole family.” She wrote that the family had moved to California in November 2022 “looking for a better future for themselves and the girls since in Colombia the situation in the country was not very good.”
Friends and neighbors created a memorial to the family with photos, flowers and…
Read the full article here
