A family that suffered unimaginable loss in a violent head-on collision last week in Van Nuys is speaking out, asking the community for support and pleading with authorities to help bring closure.
Anna Cordova Calderon struggled to hold back tears as she remembered her young son, 5-year-old Yeshua, and her mother, both of whom died as a result of the June 29 crash.
“Everything happened really fast,” Calderon said in Spanish.
The grieving woman said her son loved soccer and his grandmother, 74-year-old Aura De La Cruz Calderón de Tobar.
“She was with us every minute that she could be,” Calderon said of her mother. “I can’t imagine my life without her.”
The family was on their way to dinner last Thursday night. In the car, Yeshua and his grandmother sat in the back seat. The young boy’s older stepsister and her boyfriend were up front. They were traveling southbound on Woodley Avenue just south of Victory with Anna and her husband a short distance behind in another vehicle when tragedy struck.
Investigators with the Los Angeles Police Department say that around 9:30 p.m., the driver of a white Honda Accord headed northbound on Woodley veered into oncoming traffic and smashed head-on into the family’s car.
Calderon’s mother was declared dead at the scene. Yeshua was rushed to the hospital where he was later pronounced dead. The child’s stepsister and her boyfriend only sustained minor injuries.
Aerial footage of the scene from Sky5 showed the two vehicles nose-to-nose. Severe front-end damage could be seen, along with deployed airbags as rescue crews attempted to render medical aid.
Police have only identified the wrong-way driver as a man in his 30s, who suffered critical injuries. His passenger, a woman in her 30s, suffered moderate injuries.
An attorney for Calderon’s family believes the man in the white Honda Accord may have been under the influence at the time of the crash.
“There was a witness who reported seeing that the person had been drinking and, I believe, smoking marijuana at the park prior to that and that’s where that comes from, but it’s not been confirmed,” Attorney Tiffany Feder told KTLA.
For now, LAPD will only say that the investigation is ongoing and that no arrests have been made. For Calderon, however, the loss is overwhelming.
“Dear God, make justice,” she said in Spanish, “Because those people, just like those people who damaged us completely – all those dreams; all that love we had for our son; my mother who would visit us – have ruined us completely.”
A GoFundMe campaign has been organized to help the family with the cost of planning funerals for both Yeshua and his grandmother.
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