Three members of a family were killed when a Mercedes SUV plowed into the bus stop they were waiting at in order to take them for a day trip to the San Francisco zoo on Saturday.
Two of the victims, a father, 40, his young child, 1, were pronounced dead at the scene of the tragedy in the West Portal section of the city. Three others were rushed a to a local hospital where another victim where the child’s mother, 38, was pronounced dead. The deceased were all related.
An infant, around three months old, was also among those taken to the hospital, that child is being treated for life-threatening injuries, an official said. The driver of the white Mercedes SUV that crashed into shelter was also treated.
Friends were seen leaving flowers for the victims at the sight of the horror crash. One friend said the mother was from Portugal and the father of the child was from Brazil, according to ABC San Francisco. ‘They were an amazing family… They never took the bus,’ friend Rogerio Faleiro, told The San Francisco Chronicle through tears. Faleiro said that the family recently sold their car.
A heart shaped cutout at the scene of the memorial reads: ‘Remembering the precious lives lost on March 16, 2024.’ Just 24 hours after the crash, city workers were seen clearing the debris fro mthe site in front of yellow police tape, reports The Chronicle.
A witness told the newspaper that she heard the crash and that is sounded like ‘an explosion.’ The witness, Nikki Mashburn, said that the victims suffered head injuries. ‘When the paramedics showed up, you could tell … they didn’t know what to do first,’ Mashburn said.
While another witness, Gabriel Cinquepalm, told The Chronicle that the driver of the SUV was a woman in her 70s. He said that after the crash, she got out of her vehicle with a look as if to say: ‘What have I done?’ and that she was screaming at the sky.
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency said Saturday it was investigating the cause of the crash in collaboration with the San Francisco Police Department. San Francisco Mayor London Breed said on X, formerly Twitter, that she had visited the scene of the collision on Saturday. She called it ‘heartbreaking.’