Greater than 150 mourners gathered Saturday to recollect the mom and her 11-year-old daughter tragically killed in a head-on crash with an allegedly drunk unlawful immigrant driver.
Sobbing and weeping family and mates — lots of them, donning shirts with photographs of Maria Pleitez and little Dayanara Cortes’ beaming faces — lined up exterior the Lakewood Funeral House in Howell to pay their respects at a somber wake.
At one level, a mourner who’d been crying uncontrollably leaned over the 42-year-old mom’s open casket, and repeated the phrases “¡Qué fuerte!” (“How horrible” in English) and “Porque?,” the Spanish phrase for “Why?,” time and again.
Amongst these grieving the 2 devastating deaths was Dayanara’s father and her buddy, additionally 11, who was injured within the July 26 crash and is recovering.
Pleitez was driving the 2 women to a Wawa to get milkshakes at round 11:20 p.m. in Lakewood when Raul Luna-Perez, 43, slammed his Dodge Durango into the mother’s Nissan Sentra, in keeping with native prosecutors.
She was killed immediately, and Dayanara, who was sitting within the entrance passenger seat, died quickly after arriving on the hospital.
Luna-Perez was charged with two counts of vehicular murder and assault by auto.
Prices may very well be added as soon as prosecutors obtain the outcomes of an alcohol blood stage check.
The Mexican immigrant, who was within the US illegally, had been arrested twice this spring for DUI in Purple Financial institution, NJ — one thing Pleitez’s niece bemoaned on the wake.
Maria del Carmen Pleitez informed The Publish her aunt was a hardworking, cat-loving, doting US citizen who immigrated from El Salvador 24 years in the past.
“She was a contented individual,” Pleitez, 39, mentioned. “She would come to a spot, or she would come to our properties, and simply deliver happiness. She was by no means indignant, by no means unhappy. She at all times had the energy to proceed going, and that’s what hurts, as a result of the man had two DUIs already.”
Maria Pleitez spent years working within the portray division of Superior Promotional Luggage, a Toms River promotional merchandise provider, the niece mentioned.
“She was the top of the household,” Maria del Carmen Pleitez mentioned. “She was mentioning her two daughters. She had her personal condo, her personal place, and she or he by no means requested her assist for something. We beloved her.”
Pleitez’s 16-year-old daughter, who stayed house, is heartbroken, she mentioned.
“It’s so arduous. We nonetheless really feel like we are able to’t digest the whole lot. Like, you get up within the morning, you suppose it’s not true.”
