A FAMILY IN PAIN
Forklift victim recalled as devoted father
A Queens construction worker killed in a freak forklift accident last week was as a doting father of two who dedicated everything to his children, grieving relatives told the
Daily News.
Wilson Patricio Lopez Flores, 32, was remembered during a small funeral service at the Coppola-Migliore Funeral Home Thursday, eight days after he was crushed by a forklift he was operating outside a Queens Village mosque.
The friendly Bay Restoration employee was lowering a pallet of building materials on 211th St. near Jamaica Ave. when the forklift lurched to one side, throwing him from the cabin. The forklift then fell over, crushing him underneath it.
Flores, an Ecuadoran immigrant with five brothers and sisters, moved to the U.S. in 2008, said Luis Lopez, his brother.
“Since then he has been with me,” his brother said. “What he wanted to do is, he wanted to stay here for three more years and go back to Ecuador, to be with his parents.”
When he wasn’t working, Flores tried to spend as much time as he could with his daughters Morelia, 9, and Leslie, 13. The two girls lived with their mother, Lopez said.
As his family takes steps to ship Flores’ body back to Ecuador, Lopez, who has a daughter close to Morelia’s age, hopes his nieces remain close.
“More than anything because of the girls, because they are my blood, we’ll try to have contact with them,” he said.
More than 60 people gathered to pay respects to Flores at a solemn service Thursday. Flores was laid out in a white suit, alongside arrangements of red and white flowers.
“He was a good person. He wasn’t rude,” said his cousin, Wilson Flores, 41. “He got along with everybody.”
Flores doted on his youngest daughter, spending most weekends with her, his family recalled.
“They were sweet with each other, they played together, they had a good relationship,” his cousin said.
Luis Fernandez, 34, a close friend, recalled Flores as a good person, and implored his family to spend time with his teenage daughter.
“The love of a father cannot be compared,” he said.