Young mother injured in I-5 crash later dies

A woman who was injured in a multiple-vehicle freeway crash last week on a San Ysidro freeway died hours later at a hospital, authorities said Monday.

Damariz Rosas, 22, was gravely injured around 4:20 p.m. Wednesday in a crash on south Interstate 5 between Dairy Mart Road and Via de San Ysidro, according to the county Medical Examiner’s Office.

She died about four hours later at UC San Diego Medical Center in Hillcrest.

An online obituary identified her full last name as Rosas-Avilez. In a message Monday, her husband said the couple had been together since 2016, had wed in 2018 and shared a “beautiful daughter.”

The California Highway Patrol has not released details about what caused the crash, which involved at least three vehicles and sent at least three people, including a San Diego police officer, to hospitals. But the Medical Examiner’s Office said Rosas was unable to avoid traffic that had stopped in front of her, and her vehicle rearended another vehicle.

Medics quickly took several injured people to hospitals, including the San Diego police officer, who sustained minor injuries, according to authorities.

Footage from a 10News helicopter showed about a dozen firefighters trying to free one driver from a badly damaged vehicle. The crews appeared to be still working to rescue that person as of about 5:15 p.m. It was unclear if Rosas was the driver trapped in the vehicle.