A family is grieving an 18-year-old man from Mexico who was killed in a crash involving at least five vehicles in South Los Angeles on Tuesday afternoon.
The accident on Vermont Avenue and 97th Street in the Westmont area, just three blocks from Juan Manuel Sanchez Salas’ home, was the last thing the family could have expected to happen.
“I did not know that he had just left home. He had came to eat. He left home going, heading towards Vermont,” his cousin, Maria Sanchez, told NBCLA.
Juan Manuel Sanchez Salas moved to LA from Mexico less than a year ago to live with his father and study English. His cousins say he was a happy and very responsible man.
“He was pretty cool. I know he was a really hardworking guy,” Maria Sanchez said. “He would just go to school, to the gym. From there, he would come home and go to work again. He used to cut hair as well.”
According to the California Highway Patrol, a driver in a Suburban was speeding, headed south on Vermont Avenue around 2 p.m. Tuesday, when they slammed into a traffic pole and an Audi and then flipped over and smashed into several other cars, including Juan Manuel Sanchez Salas’. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
His mother and two other siblings still live in Mexico, while his father is now in the U.S. all alone.
“It sucks that he’s gone because he had so many ambitious goals, and he couldn’t accomplish most of them,” Maria Sanchez said. “We really want justice for what happened because it wouldn’t be fair to just let it be, and nothing is done.”
CHP investigators say the driver who caused the accident is in his 70s and may have been experiencing a medical emergency. He and his passenger are still in the hospital in critical condition.