ATWATER, Calif. (AP) – Fernando Ramirez and Petra Carillo Ruiz were headed from Mexico to Washington to visit a daughter they hadn’t seen in many years – but the married couple were among the four people killed when a bus slammed into a highway sign in California’s Central Valley, authorities said. Twenty-three people were injured.
Ramirez, 57, and Carillo Ruiz, 64, were known to nearly everyone in their hometown of Villa Juarez, Nayarit because they lived across from the small town’s central plaza, said one of their neighbors, Natalia Torrayo Garcia.
“Everyone is very sad because of the news,” Torrayo Garcia told the Merced Sun-Star on Wednesday. “They were very humble people, very hardworking.”
The couple had a 12-year-old niece traveling with them Tuesday who was only slightly hurt and hadn’t seen their daughter, who lives in Pasco, Washington, in a dozen years, the newspaper reported.
The dead also included Jose Morales Bravo, 58, who lived most recently in Avalon, California, but came from Concepcion de Buenos Aires in the state of Jalisco, Mexico, according to relatives. His wife was hospitalized in the crash.