Joshua Mendez was looking forward to the birth of a son this week, and his brother Jose Pazos was to celebrate his 28th birthday on Friday.
Sadly, neither sibling reached those milestones after their 2015 Chevrolet Cruze struck a median while going west on the Staten Island Expressway near the Martin Luther King Jr. Expressway, killing them both along with a friend, identified by sources as Raymond Irizarry, police and relatives said. All three men were in their 20s.
GoFundMe
Joshua Mendez and Jose Pazos were killed in a Staten Island car crash on Sunday morning. (GoFundMe)
Police said after the red sedan lost control and struck the median, it flipped onto a section of grass by the highway about 4:20 a.m. Sunday.
Mendez and Pazos were two of seven brothers to their parents, Walter Aguilar and Mirna Mendez, who moved with their big family to the New Brighton section of Staten Island 18 years ago.
The parents were too grief-stricken to talk with a reporter on Monday, but a third brother, Jason Aguilar, said he, Mendez and Pazos all worked for Amazon on the same shifts in warehouses located across the street from each other on Staten Island.
“It’s crazy because we were talking about celebrating his [Jose’s] birthday on Oct 10. He [Jose] was about to turn 28. That same day, my brother Joshua was supposed to have his baby. Joshua’s daughter was actually born on the same day as my brother’s [Jose’s] birthday. That day [Oct 10] was really special.”
“We have always been together, grew up together. We stick to each other. Seven brothers is like a bond and we never thought it’s going to go,” said Jason.
“It’s hard talking about it. What are we gonna do? We already had everything planned,” Jason Aguilar said.
Mendez’s death has also devastated his girlfriend, Kim Lopez, who was about to give birth to their son. The couple also has a daughter, age 5, she said. “Joshua’s son was about to be born on the ninth,” Lopez told The News. “His brother Christian called me at like 6 in the morning and told me what happened.
“He was working to support the baby,” she said. “He was working to get his life together. He was a good guy. We were planning to get married down the line.”
Jason Aguilar said the now-wrecked Cruze that his two brothers and Irizarry were in was kind of the family car.
“It was my mom’s, but at the same time, was my brother’s because she gave it to him,” Aguilar said. “They [detectives] told me they might’ve lost control of the car or something, but I’m not really sure how.”
Both Lopez and Aguilar did not know why the men were out on the highway at that hour. Aguilar recalled a brief conversation on Saturday — the last one with his brother.
“I came in at 7; he came in a little later, around 10. I left early, around 4-something, because I had my girlfriend’s appointment, we’re about to have a baby ourselves,” he said.
“I remember saying, ‘I’ll see you later, I’m going to mom’s house,’ and he said the same. Then later, I didn’t see him. I woke up to this news, I thought it was a dream. It didn’t feel real until I went there.”
