California man celebrating marriage killed in Spain

WALNUT CREEK — California resident Jared Tucker and his new bride had just sent joyful pictures from their first trip to Europe, a vacation they’d saved for to celebrate their 1-year anniversary. The last pictures arrived a day before tragedy struck.

Tucker’s family in Northern California learned Friday that he was among those killed in a deadly truck attack a day earlier in Barcelona, Spain, becoming the only known American fatality among 14 victims.

Tucker’s father, Dan Tucker, stood outside his home in the San Francisco Bay Area town of Walnut Creek, scrolling through pictures on his phone in disbelief. One showed Jared frolicking in the ocean at a Barcelona beach, his arms raised above his head. Another shows Jared in sunglasses pretending to ride a statue of a lion.

“That’s him just having a ball,” his father said, choking up as he looked at the pictures. “Everybody is just shocked. What are the chances? That one person in the whole United States is the victim of terrorists and it’s Jared.”

Jared, 42, worked with his father in a family business remodeling swimming pools. He had “a magnetic personality and people loved him,” his dad said. He liked to fish, play golf and other sports and he was deeply in love with his wife, Heidi-nunes-tucker, 40, a schoolteacher, his father said.

Betty Needham, who works at one of the companies Daniel Tucker owns, said she’s known the younger Tucker for years.

AP PHOTO BY SANTI PALACIOS A woman lights up a candle in a memorial tribute to the victims of the terrorist attack on the historic street of Las Ramblas one day after the terrorist attack, in Barcelona, Spain, Friday.