Hollister
– His father called him “Thunder” because everywhere he went
people felt his presence.
Hollister – His father called him “Thunder” because everywhere he went people felt his presence. And although Albert Andrew Hernandez died in the car accident Monday night that killed two other teens and injured a fourth, his family will hold tight to his larger-than-life aura for the rest of their lives.
Hernandez, 13, Vanessa Jimenez, 13 and Armando Limas, 16, died in a stolen Jaguar after a fiery wreck at Fairview and Shore roads in the parking lot of Denice & Filice Packing Co. after fleeing from police about 10:30pm.
“It’s a big nightmare. I’m still hoping he walks through the front door,” said Hernandez’s mother, Amelia. “My hope is that it’s going to help some other kids to stop and think before they do something like this. They were just babies. I can’t even imagine what they went through – I don’t even want to think about it.”
A 13-year-old girl, whose name is being withheld because she is a juvenile, suffered burns to one side of her body, a fractured vertebrae, a collapsed lung and facial lacerations, said California Highway Patrol Officer Terry Mayes. Santa Clara Valley Medical Center personnel said she has been upgraded from critical to serious condition, Mayes said. The CHP’s Multidisciplinary Accident Investigation Team won’t complete its full investigation for a couple months, and is currently putting together a 24-hour profile of the victims, Mayes said.
The team will create an elaborate diagram of the scene, find the exact position of the car on impact based on the vehicle’s rotation and other details relevant to the investigation, Mayes said. While the investigation will take months to complete, Hernandez’s and the other victim’s families’ emotional reconstruction could take a lifetime.
The incident began sometime early Monday afternoon when the two girls got out of school and stole a 2001 Jaguar from the home of Hollister resident Wendy Cravens, Mayes said. The girls had attended a slumber party at the home on Las Palmas Drive the night before, she said.
Hernandez’s mother, Amelia, said the girls picked him up at his home sometime between 5pm and 6pm Monday evening, but she didn’t know who they were, that they were only 13 or that the car was stolen.
“He said he was going to go for a ride and he’d be right back,” she said. “That was the last time I saw him.”
When Hernandez didn’t return by about 8:30pm his mother started to worry and called some of his friends looking for him, she said.
Hernandez’s father, Albert, heard the crash over his scanner about 10:30pm and immediately assumed his son was one of the people in the car, he said.
“We hadn’t heard from Andrew all night and we were looking for him,” he said. “We suspected it was him. It was.”
Hernandez’s parents drove out to the accident scene about 11pm and saw the smoking car, but continued to hope he wasn’t involved, his mother said. After the accident, she received calls from some of Hernandez’s friends who had talked to him while the foursome were in the car, she said. While she still held out hope that her son had somehow gotten out of the car before it crashed, she said down deep she “just knew.”
The reality of the incident hadn’t quite set in for Hernandez’s family yet, or for the families of the other teens. In their shock, however, talking about the good memories managed to bring out some smiles through the tears.
Jimenez’s aunt, Lila Vasquez, said Tuesday that she was shocked to learn her beautiful niece, who she considered more of a daughter than a niece, was involved in the accident.
“She’s going to be missed, and we love her very, very much,” Vasquez said, seated outside the home of Jimenez’s mother, Estela Hernandez, Tuesday afternoon.
Limas’ aunt, Juli Cooper, won’t forget the way her 13-year-old son’s face would light up when her nephew was around, she said.
“My son really looked up to him. He was a good kid,” Cooper said. “He’d do anything for you – every time he saw you he’d give you a hug and a smile. All his friends loved him. It’s so sad.”
The Hernandez family has received tremendous support from friends and other members of the community, Hernandez’s mother said.
Hernandez’s parent’s emp-loyer, Ken Rose, owner of LTD SUV Limousine, opened a fund in Hernandez’s name at San Benito and South Valley National banks to help the family with funeral expenses.
Linda Stamatopoulos, ministry leader for the Seventh Day Adventist Church, also opened a fund at San Benito Bank for Limas, who attended the church, she said. She said she would like each family who lost a child to have some kind of fund set up to help with funeral expenses, and that the community needs to rally around all of its youth to prevent similar tragedies in the future.
She hopes to contact the schools and put together some type of city-wide youth awareness program in the next couple weeks, she said.
“It’s so easy to be critical as to why kids do these things, but it’s all our responsibility, really,” she said. “If we can find a way to be part of the solution rather than turning our backs, we’ll have a much safer environment for our children. We all live in this community together.”
