Mourners pay respects to Ariz. family of 10 killed in flash flood

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The 10 white caskets belonging to three generations of a Mexican immigrant family were arranged in a horseshoe around the altar at a Catholic church, each one bearing a metal crucifix inside its satinlined lid.

They died together in seconds when a dark torrent of water rushed through the swimming hole in central Arizona where they were celebrating a family birthday on July 15, killing a grandmother, aunts and uncles, children and grandchildren.

More than 1,000 mourners remembered them Tuesday at a funeral Mass.

The viewing at the church came a day after another flash flood trapped 17 hikers in a scenic canyon outside Tucson. Rescuers had to pluck some of the hikers, including a 4-yearold boy, from a mountain creek swollen by floodwaters Sunday, but everyone survived.

In the deadly flooding more than a week earlier, Hector Miguel Garnica, 26, was the last member of the family to be found but was positively identified through his DNA just in time to be included in the funeral Mass.

His wife, Maria del Carmen Raya Garcia, was killed as they celebrated her 27th birthday, along with their three children: Hector Daniel, 7, Mia, 5, and Emily, 3.

Also killed was Raya Garcia’s mother, Selia Garcia Castaneda, 57; Raya Garcia’s brother Javier Raya Garcia, 19; her sister Maribel Raya Garcia, 24; Maribel’s daughter Erika Janel Camacho Raya, 2; and Jonatan Leon Villanueva, a grandson of Selia Garcia who would have turned 13 next month.

The group was swept away when a flash flood from a thunderstorm upstream rushed through the swimming area in Tonto National Forest.