KERMAN, Calif. – Down a dirt path surrounded by grape vineyards and flowering fruit trees, Candido Ojeda’s home has turned into a place of mourning.
A large table filled with colorful flowers lined with candles and a black table cloth displays the portraits — fit neatly into small black frames — of seven men.
Two of them are Ojeda’s nephews, who two days before were headed to work near Firebaugh when the GMC van they rode in with six others was struck by a Chevrolet pickup truck. In an instant, eight men died and one was left injured – fighting for his life at a Fresno hospital.
The California Highway Patrol suspects the driver of the pickup truck crossed the median and slammed into the van. He also died on scene. The impact left the van crushed, just as the workers were making their morning commutes to a vineyard farm.
What happened that morning
Farmworkers in California’s agricultural San Joaquin Valley routinely wake up before the sun and fill rural roads in search of their worksites, which can be miles away. Many carpool to save money on gas.
The morning of the crash, there was light fog, according to Ojeda, who works at the same ranch and takes the same route to work.
“You never know what could happen,” Ojeda says, in Spanish, of hazards along the way. “It could have happened to me, or a coworker behind me.”
Ojeda says if he let himself worry about all the things that could happen, he wouldn’t leave his bed or go to work. But the bills don’t wait and he and his wife are raising four children – and besides, he says, nobody ever knows for sure.
On Friday, he had just arrived to work at Lion Farms outside Firebaugh when, around 6:18 a.m., he got a call from a coworker riding behind the GMC van. It had been struck on Avenue 7 near Road 22 in rural Madera County.
Inside the van were his nephews, Fidel and Pedro Ojeda, as well as Juvenal Talavera, Victor Hernandez, Alfredo Morales, Roberto Flores, Hector Orozco, and Benito Perez.
Some of the men, according to authorities, were ejected from the van on impact. Most died at the scene. Perez is the lone survivor, and is in stable condition in the hospital after suffering major injuries.
The men all worked with Ojeda. Flores and Talavera were the newest to the farm.
But the men didn’t always see each other at work. The vineyard ranch is vast and everyone has their job to do, says Ojeda. Some plant grapevines, others tie vines, and so forth.
But on some occasions, Ojeda would come across his nephews — Fidel and Pedro – and would exchange a friendly “Hey, how are you … keep it up,” Ojeda recalls.
He had not seen them for two weeks before they died.
Families and communities left broken
Most of Fidel and Pedro’s family is back in Mexico, said Ojeda, including his sisters who are their mothers. Fidel had a wife and two children. They live in a small village near the town of Chilapa de Álvarez, in the state of Guerrero.
Orozco also had children and a wife in Mexico.
All of the men, in fact, were from Mexico: Four were from the state of Guerrero, one from Michoacan, one from Sinaloa and one from Jalisco.
Ojeda told KVPR that their bodies will likely be flown back to their families for proper funerals in their home countries. In the meantime, mourners planned to gather for nine days at Ojeda's home south of Kerman – the city where the men all lived – to recite the rosary in prayer and remembrance of the men, as is Catholic tradition.
Rows of chairs at Ojeda's home welcomed all who wanted to join the family.
On Sunday, David Reyes’ family home just north of Kerman also attracted dozens who came to donate money and purchase homemade Mexican dishes, cakes and even pots and pans, as part of a fundraiser to help with funeral costs.
The mayor of Kerman even showed up. In one day, roughly $6,000 was raised, Reyes said. Other online fundraisers are also aiming to collect funds for the deceased.
Reyes knew many of the men that were in that van. He hopes the money is enough to send his friends’ bodies back to their families, who are asking for them. He was good friends with Hernandez and Morales in particular, and is hoping his other friend, Perez, can make it out of the hospital.
Perez’s daughter is soon turning one year old. Her first birthday party had been planned for this weekend.
Morales’s brother back home keeps asking Reyes for videos and photos of him. He misses him already, Reyes said. But Reyes hasn’t been able to bring himself to go through the countless images on his phone.
Reyes is replaying the memories of all the times he and his friends held barbecues or went to the flea market together. The night before the crash, he said Perez had called him to invite him over with a handful of friends.
Reyes couldn’t make it. But he now wonders whether that was fate calling.
“Maybe that was my sign to go, and say goodbye,” he says.
Returning home, but not how they expected
Reyes knew Morales was ready to go back to Guerrero. His friend had told him this would be his last year in California, and then he’d return to his parents. He was single and had no children.
“Now he’s returning, but not how he had wanted,” Reyes said.
And Hernandez had been building a house for himself in Guerrero. Reyes would help him find tools to send back to Hernandez’s parents, who were in charge of the building process, while Hernandez provided the money.
Reyes thinks Hernandez was making sacrifices here to afford a better life there.
“He didn’t get to see his dream come true,” Reyes said.
Reyes is trying to remember all the good things about his friends. Two years ago he used to ride in the van with them to work before he left the farm. Since then, he said, their friendship only grew.
Now he can’t believe two of his friends are gone. On a recent day, they sat in his living room. Reyes can still picture them there. He says his friends were always cheerful and always wore smiles on their faces.
“That’s how I want to remember them,” he said.
He hopes it’s the same way in their other life.
“I hope they are with God,” Reyes said in Spanish. “I hope God receives them well. Thank you for being my friends.”
Miles from Reyes’ family home, a memorial is growing at the site where the men's lives ended.
Candles are laid over patches of bright green grass. Crosses are slowly rising along the banks of an irrigation ditch.
Irma Valdez and her family showed up on Sunday to plant one more.
She was too emotional to say any words. She wasn’t related to any of the men, but she worked with them, and knew them only as good men and hard workers.
Valdez’s eyes welled up with tears before she got on her knees on the side of the road. She held her arms to her chest in silence in front of the makeshift altar.
Here, unlike at the solemn table at Ojeda’s home, the candle flames danced with the breeze, lit up by a backdrop of blossoming trees glowing pink in the sunset.
