Community honors students killed in crash

BY Kaylee Tornay of the Mail Tribune May 21, 2018

By 7:30 p.m. Sunday evening, Burns Park in White City was awash with people dressed in white — a tight circle of grief.

Some mourners clung to each other like survivors of a shipwreck. Teenagers with red eyes wound their way to their friends. Children, blissfully unaware of the reason they had been brought there, chased each other and called for their distracted parents’ attention.

At the center of the circle of people prayer candles were placed in the grass, framing portraits of the three young local victims of a deadly crash on Interstate 5 that claimed four lives in total on the night of May 19.

Luciana Tellez, Giselle Montano and Esmeralda Nava had all been seniors just weeks away from graduating from Eagle Point High School. But the crowd of vigil-keepers made it clear that they had been more — they were friends, teammates and daughters, belonging to and beloved by a community spanning various languages and backgrounds.

Read the full story at the Mail Tribune here.