A toddler is fighting for her life after a suspected drunk driver slammed into her family’s vehicle on New Year’s Eve, killing her mother, father, and 5-year-old sister.
The speeding driver, fleeing from an earlier hit-and-run crash, blew through a stop sign in an SUV at about 11:30 p.m. and drove the family’s sedan across the intersection and into a street sign and a fence, KTLA reported. Witnesses said the crash sounded like an explosion.
Forty-nine-year-old Jose Manuel Pasgagasa was killed on impact. His wife, 26-year-old Luisa Arenas, and their daughters, 5-year-old Mia and 1-year-old Hanna, were rushed to a hospital, but the older girl died on the way, KNBC reported. Arenas died on Tuesday.
Hanna is said to be improving but remains hospitalized in the pediatric intensive care unit.
“I believe over the night a miracle happened,” LAPD Detective Ryan Moreno said on Wednesday. “Because the past two days she wasn’t expected to survive. The last conversation we had with the hospital, it’s looking like she might actually make it.”
The little girl was just days away from her second birthday at the time of the crash.
Video from the scene of the crash shows debris scattered all around the intersection. Surveillance video from moments before the crash shows the suspect’s vehicle speeding through a residential neighborhood, followed by the victim in the earlier hit-and-run.
The family of four had moved to the Los Angeles area in November 2022 from Colombia, KTLA said. Police are working with relatives, most of whom still live in South America, to secure care for little Hanna.
Family members launched a GoFundMe to help pay for Hanna’s care and to bring the bodies of her family back to Colombia for burial.
Police have not released the suspect’s name, but said he is a 22-year-old man who faces possible murder/gross vehicular manslaughter charges.
