Family mourns Fort Worth mother killed in store crash

As her children waited in the car with her mother, Sylvia Zazueta dashed inside the Star Food Mart Tuesday afternoon to buy her son a drink.

When she came out, she was on a stretcher, clinging to life.

In a blink of the eye, a Chevy Avalanche driven by a 19-year-old man barreled into the store at East Lancaster Avenue and Riverside Drive, sending the young mother and seven others, including the driver, to the hospital,

Zazueta, 24, was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at John Peter Smith Hospital.

“It’s like it plays back in my head. Was she screaming? Was she crying?” asked Christina Zazueta, the victim’s cousin. “I know her kids were the last thing on her mind.”

On Wednesday, the Avalanche’s driver, Isaac Adams, remained in the Mansfield jail with bail set at $100,000, facing a charge of intoxication manslaughter.

While blood tests are not yet back, police say they suspect Adams was under the influence of drugs when he lost control and crashed into the store while fleeing a minor collision at U.S. 287 and Riverside at speeds that witnesses estimated at between 80 and 100 miles per hour.

Court records indicate that he does not have a valid drivers license.

California court records show that Adams was fined more than $1,200 after being cited in August 2013 in Riverside County for speeding and being an unlicensed driver. At the time of his arrest Tuesday, he was also wanted on two outstanding traffic warrants out of White Settlement for speeding and driving without a license, jail records show.

Adams declined to participate in a jailhouse interview Wednesday.

The convenience store is within walking distance of the city’s homeless shelters and is popular among the homeless population. Three of those injured, including a pregnant woman, listed a homeless shelter as their address, authorities say.

Most of the injured have been released from the hospital.

Wednesday night, glass, broken brick and rubble surrounded a makeshift memorial outside the store.

Relatives, including Zazueta’s husband, Juan Alcala, and her children Analisa, 8, Xavier, 5, and Jose, 8 months, were solemn as people prayed in Spanish. At times baby Jose laughed, happy to see dozens of faces, not knowing what they were gathered for.

“The oldest one, she’s taking it bad,” Christina Zazueta said. “Her son Xavier, he just was saying, ‘That truck killed my mom.’ That’s all he knows and he doesn’t understand that. None of us wanted that to be his last memory of his mother.”

Analisa stood and cried in front of boards covering the part of the store that the SUV crashed through.

Lottery tickets blew in the wind as Zazueta’s uncle, Eric Galdiano, talked about how he found out his niece had died.

“I was helping a buddy out, and I heard on the TV that a Fort Worth woman died. Then I heard her name and my heart just dropped into my stomach,” Galdiano said.

He later found out that her children saw what happened.

Alcala cried into his palm as he spoke of his wife.

“We were good friends. It was just her and me and the kids,” he said.

The two oldest are not Alcala’s children, but he said he would be there for them.

“It’s going to be tough,” he said.

‘Never hit his brakes’

Bobby Washington, 47, said he was in Fort Worth Tuesday to visit a family friend when a Chevy Avalanche pulled up alongside of him on Riverside Drive at U.S. 287.

“The guy that was on the passenger side said, ‘Hey, I can take that small dent out of the side of your car for $10,’” Washington said. “I was like, ‘No, I’m not interested.’”

But as Washington pulled into a parking lot, the Avalanche followed. Washington said the passenger got out and continued to try to persuade him to let him fix the dent. Washington refused, and as he was preparing to pull out of the parking lot, he said the Avalanche rear-ended his car.

“By that time, I get out. I don’t have any idea what’s going on,” Washington said.

Washington asked the driver to exchange name and insurance information, but the driver began insisting he could fix the damage.

“I said, ‘No, just give me your information.’ He gets back into the truck and says, ‘Let me get it.’ Then he burnt off,” Washington said.

Washington said he began to follow the truck with hopes of getting its license plate.

“He is flying up Riverside heading back down toward Lancaster Drive. He ran the red light and tried to turn left on Lancaster. He was going at least 90-something miles an hour trying to make that turn. He lost control of the vehicle and headed into the parking lot where there were people outside and that’s when he went into the building.”

“My mind went straight to ‘I know there’s people working in there.’ I knew people were inside the store, workers and everything,” Washington said. “I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ To see how it went up in there, no brakes. The guy never hit his brakes. There were no skid marks or anything. At that rate of speed he went, it sounded like something had blown up. He hit it so hard on impact.”

Washington said he called 911 and pulled into the store’s parking lot, watching as the truck’s passenger exited the hole of the debris-filled store by climbing over the truck.

“I was almost the first person he saw when he hit the parking lot,” Washington said. “He’s telling me, ‘It wasn’t me! … I wasn’t driving!”

Since the wreck, he said, he’s been spreading the message to everyone to let loved ones know how they feel.

“She never knew that her life would end that day,” Washington said of Zazueta. “It’s unfortunate.”

‘A very loving mother’

Zazueta’s death occurred just two days before she and her husband were to celebrate their second wedding anniversary.

“He is an awesome guy. The two oldest kids weren’t even his and he just accepted them as their own,” Christina Zazueta said. “We’re all very thankful for that, especially now.”

Christina Zazueta said that because of the high cost of child care, her cousin stayed at home to care for her three children while her husband worked two jobs “to make ends meet.”

“She was a very loving mother. She would do anything for her kids,” Christina Zazueta said.

Christina Zazueta said she last saw her cousin about two weeks ago, waiting at a bus stop with the children late at night. She said she stopped and repeatedly offered Zazueta and the kids a ride home, but her cousin declined.

“The light turned green. I said, ‘Are you sure?’ She said, ‘Yeah, I’ll be fine,’” Zazueta recalled. “That was the last thing she said to me.”

Christina Zazueta said she now suspects her cousin was embarrassed to have her see where she and her family were living. The cousin said she’s since learned from Zazueta’s sister that the family had been living in and out of various motels.

“I don’t care,” Christina Zazueta said. “Before she had the two boys, she lived with me at my apartment. I was trying to help her get back on her feet.”

Christina Zazueta said she can’t put into words her anger at the man police say crashed into the store while trying to flee from a minor wreck.

“I just hope he sees what he’s taken away from us,” she said. “Why couldn’t he just be like a normal person and stay there an exchange information. Why did he have to run?”

This story was originally published April 1, 2015 at 4:52 PM with the headline "Family mourns Fort Worth mother killed in store crash."