Barcelona victims: Dad threw himself between kids, van
PARIS — The dead and injured in Barcelona were a snapshot of the world — men, women and children from nearly three dozen nations — testifying to the global appeal of the sun-kissed city. Here is a look at some of the victims:
Bruno Gulotta, 35, Italy
A father from Legnano in northern Italy is being praised as a hero who protected his children during the attack.
One of his Gulotta’s work colleagues, Pino Bruno, told the Italian news agency ANSA that he saved the life of his two young children — Alessandro, 6, and Aria, 7 months — by throwing himself between them and the van that mowed people down.
Bruno said he spoke to Gulotta’s wife, Martina, and she told him her husband had been holding the six-year-old’s hand on the tourist-thronged avenue in Barcelona when “the van appeared suddenly.”
“Everyone knelt down, instinctively, as if to protect themselves,” Bruno said, adding that Gulotta put himself in front of his children and was fatally struck.
Gulotta was a sales manager for Tom’s Hardware Italia, an online technology publication.
Jared Tucker, 42, U.S.
Jared Tucker, who worked with his father at a family-owned pool business in the Bay Area, has been confirmed as among the dead, his family said. His sister, Tina Luke, told the Associated Press that Tucker, 42, and his wife, Heidi Nunes-Tucker, were celebrating their first wedding anniversary. Nunes-Tucker told NBC News that the couple were having drinks at a patio when her husband said he was going to the bathroom. “Next thing I know, there’s screaming, yelling,” she said. “I got pushed inside the souvenir kiosk and stayed there hiding while everybody kept running by screaming.”
Jared Tucker leaves behind three daughters.
Pepita Codina, 75, Spain
Pepita Codina’s death was confirmed on Twitter and Instagram by Xavier Vilamala, the mayor of Hipolit de Voldrega, the town of 3,000 people where she was from near Barcelona. Vilamala said on Twitter he was “very sad and distressed” by the news. Local media reported that Codina’s daughter, Elisabet, was injured in the attack.
Ana Maria Suarez, Spain
The Spanish Royal family sent condolences to Suarez’s family in its Twitter account after Ana Maria died in the attack in the resort town of Cambrils. According to local media, the woman was originally from the city of Zaragoza, and was on vacation with her family. Her husband and one of her sisters are injured in a hospital.
Francisco Lopez Rodriguez, Spain
One of his nieces, Raquel Baron Lopez, said on her Twitter account that Rodriguez, 60, died immediately when he was struck by the van. “We are a broken family” Lopez posted on Twitter. The mayor of Lanteira, the southern town in Spain where Rodriguez was born, confirmed his death. Relatives said that Rodriguez was a 57-year-old machine operator who was strolling with his family along Las Ramblas when the attack occurred. His wife, badly injured in the attack, worked at a meat shop in Rubi, a nearby town where they both lived.
Luca Russo, 25, Italy
One of Italy’s two victims in the Barcelona van attack is being mourned as a brilliant young engineer dragged to his death before his girlfriend’s eyes. Luca Russo, 25, already had a job in electronic engineering, no easy feat in Italy, where youth unemployment runs stubbornly high.
The girlfriend, Marta Scomazzon, who was hospitalized with a fractured foot and elbow, told an aunt that “we were walking together, then the van came on top of us.”
Elke Vanbockrijck, Belgium
Arnould Partoens, president of the KFC Heur Tongeren soccer team, said Vanbockrijck was at the club “nearly every day” ferrying her 10- and 14-year-old boys back and forth to training and matches. “She was always positive,” he said in a phone interview. He said the team would hold a minute of silence before every match and training session this weekend.
Partoens said the family was on vacation in Barcelona. The boys and their father, a policeman, were unhurt, he said.
“The mother was in the wrong moment and the wrong place,” he said.