Monday marked a somber anniversary as people who lost loved ones to one of the worst aviation disasters in history gathered in Cerritos to mourn those who died.<\/p>\n
Forty years ago, 82 people died after Aerom\u00e9xico Flight 498 and a Piper Aircraft plane collided midair over Cerritos. All 64 passengers of the Aerom\u00e9xico plane, all three passengers of the Piper aircraft and 15 people on the ground sadly died.<\/p>\n
A sculpture now rests near the crash site to commemorate the victims. It\u2019s where their loved ones gathered on Monday for a moment of silence and a reading of the names of all those who died.<\/p>\n
Alexander Guzman, whose father, brother, uncle and several other families died in the crash, was in attendance for the gathering.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like it was yesterday,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery year at 11:56 is when I show up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eri Cronkhite was 12 years old when the crash happened and had briefly left the neighborhood with her dad when the planes collided. She, unfortunately, lost her mother, sister and brother in the incident.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the way back, my dad actually saw the plane falling while we were driving back,\u201d Cronkhite said. \u201cI said, \u2018Is that where they are?\u2019 My dad said, \u2018I don\u2019t know, but it\u2019s damn close,\u2019 and we turned the corner and sure enough, the whole block was in flames.\u201d<\/p>\n
Martin Sicairos also lost relatives to the tragedy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI lost four,\u201d he said. \u201cMy youngest brother, his wife and his two boys. I think about them all the time. It\u2019s hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
NBCLA\u2019s Hetty Chang lived a mere five houses down from where the crash happened. She recalls returning home from a shopping trip with her family when they saw a plume of smoke coming from their neighborhood.<\/p>\n
Chang said retired Lakewood sheriff\u2019s deputy Jerry Berry was one of the first first responders on the scene.<\/p>\n
\u201cI see this tower of smoke,\u201d Berry said. \u201cI\u2019m like, wait a minute, what the hell is this? As I got closer, I saw it was a lot more than a little airplane.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although four decades have passed since the devastating collision, the emotions remain raw for those who lost loved ones and those who witnessed the tragedy.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no way you can forget,\u201d Berry said. \u201cWhat you saw, what you smelled.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Monday marked a somber anniversary as people who lost loved ones to one of the worst aviation disasters…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449674,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[21173,48,52,51,47,50,49],"class_list":["post-449673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-cerritos","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}