Phoenix family among 6 dead in crash
25 vehicles pile up on I-10 in southwestern New Mexico
APRIL MORGANROTH
Six people were killed, including a Phoenix couple and their infant daughter, following a chain-reaction collision on Monday on Interstate 10 in New Mexico near the Arizona state line.
Police say winds and a dust storm abruptly blew in on westbound I-10 near Lordsburg, New Mexico, around 5 p.m.
The pileup involved 18 commercial trucks and seven passenger cars.
Authorities say five people died at the scene; a sixth died later.
New Mexico state police identified the victims as Jose Manuel Clemente, 77, and his daughter Maurella Clemente Munoz, 38, of El Paso; and Josefina Silva, 47, of Escondido, California.
Also killed were Jose Elias Caraveo-Serrano, 30; wife Susana Caraveo, 29; and daughter, 9month-old Julissa Caraveo, all of Phoenix.
The accident struck the day before the couple’s second wedding anniversary.
The couple were engaged within five months of meeting, married within the year.
“Nothing made Suzy happier than marrying Jose and having Baby Julissa ... She was the apple of their eyes,” Carmen Quezada, Susana’s mother, said in Spanish.
“My heart is so heavy. How can it be mended?”
Jose, Susana and Julissa had been driving home from a relative’s wedding.
“My heart just can’t accept it, it cannot be true,” said Blanca Caraveo, Jose’s aunt. “He cherished everything about Suzy and the baby.”
Carmen Quezada said that, amid the grief, she was clinging to the “most romantic love story” between her daughter and son-in-law.
“I will miss joking with my cousin and his beautiful bride,” Patricia Velasquez, Jose’s cousin, said in Spanish. “If you saw them together, and how in love they were, you would tear up just watching them.”
Jose and Susana met at a rodeo on June 28, 2014.
Quezada said she encouraged Susana to go talk to him, “but before she got up the courage to do so, he had found her already” and asked her on a date.
Relatives say that when Julissa was born, it only deepened her parents’ love for one another and brought family members closer together.
“Baby Jul is the most precious thing to all the family,” Velasquez said. “She mended many hearts in the family to not be so hard.”
Julissa is now an angel, Carmen Quezada said.
“She was an angel here on earth, and now our guardian angel in heaven,” Quezada said. “She made my soul smile.”
Bob Yacone and his wife were driving home to Deming, New Mexico, from a trip to Scottsdale when they came upon the crash. “Our hearts and prayers go out to these families,” Yacone said. “No one would think a day trip would turn so tragic.”
The Associated Press contributed to this article.