A San Diego family mourns after a deadly storm toppled a tree branch, killing a grandfather on Christmas Eve. <\/p>\n
SAN DIEGO \u2014 A powerful winter storm turned deadly Wednesday morning in the City Heights neighborhood of San Diego, where a large tree branch fell and killed a man just outside his home.<\/p>\n
San Diego Fire-Rescue says the incident happened shortly after 11 a.m. near the intersection of Marlborough Avenue and Wightman Street. The man was standing on the corner when part of a large tree suddenly split off and fell on him.<\/p>\n
Battalion Chief Craig Newell with San Diego Fire-Rescue said the falling branch struck the man and knocked him unconscious.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had gone into cardiac arrest by the time our crews arrived,\u201d Newell said. \u201cThey did everything they could, but unfortunately the tree was too heavy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The chief became emotional while recounting the rescue effort, describing the tragic outcome despite the responders\u2019 best efforts.<\/p>\n
The man\u2019s family is now grieving and demanding answers. His daughter-in-law, who asked not to be identified on camera, said the family is struggling to process the loss on what should have been a joyful time of year.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow do you go home on Christmas Eve and tell your kids that their grandpa is dead?\u201d she said. \u201cI still can\u2019t find the words.\u201d<\/p>\n
She described the victim as Roberto Luis, an elderly and loving man who was always helping his family.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want him to be remembered as Roberto Luis \u2014 an elderly, loving man,\u201d she said. \u201cHe was always helping his family.\u201d<\/p>\n
But alongside her grief, she expressed anger, saying the family had repeatedly raised concerns about the tree with the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been complaining to the city about this tree for more than five years, and nothing was ever done,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel like San Diego failed.\u201d<\/p>\n
The family believes the tragedy could have been prevented and hopes sharing their story will lead to accountability and change.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf he were here, he would want people to know this is not okay,\u201d she said. \u201cThat could have been his niece, his granddaughter, or anybody else\u2019s family member.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a statement to CBS 8, the city said:\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Our thoughts are with the family, friends, neighbors and first responders impacted by this sudden loss of life. City crews have performed maintenance on this specific tree-in-question in January 2024 as a proactive measure to trim branches, and the tree presented no concerns or defects at that time. The City doesn\u2019t have a record of any maintenance requests for this specific tree.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A San Diego family mourns after a deadly storm toppled a tree branch, killing a grandfather on Christmas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368567,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-368566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}