mother – New York Daily News

A Staten Island mom keeping a desperate vigil at her 6-year-old daughter’s hospital bedside was reeling after her death Sunday morning, 48 hours after the car crash that claimed the life of a 90-year-old man the little girl thought of as her grandfather.

“Today, Sunday, I go back home and I don’t have my princess with me,” said 39-year-old Marlene Trinidad, who hasn’t left her child’s side since little Anheli Vasquez was rushed to the hospital.

“I feel really, really, really, really bad,” Trinidad said. “My heart is broken.”

Anheli was riding in the car, a Honda SUV, with 90-year-old Gerardo Avila and his 70-year-old wife, Perla, who was driving south on Forest Hill Road when they collided with an Audi Q5 making a left turn from Rockland Ave. onto Forest Hill in New Springville around 10 a.m. Friday, cops said.

Gerardo Avila died in the hospital shortly after the crash. He and Perla, who was injured but is expected to survive, were babysitting Anheli, as they often did, Trinidad said. Anheli considered the older couple her grandparents despite not being related.

“She does not have the same blood as him but Anheli passed away thinking Gerardo… was her biological grandpa,” Trinidad said. “She called (Perla) her grandma.”

Trinidad said she rushed to Staten Island University North Hospital when she heard about the crash.

“It was really bad. When I arrived to the hospital they told me (Anheli’s) neck was hurt and her brain was bad,” Trinidad said in broken English.

“Her situation was catastrophic. The first time when I arrived I was thinking it was a coma… but it was catastrophic. It was more than a coma,” Trinidad recounted.

Little Anheli never awoke, but Trinidad said she stayed by her side.

“I arrived (at the hospital) when they called me and I just left today. I never be out. All the time close to her,” she said.

Anheli was born in Staten Island, and was in the first grade, and “was a really loving little girl,” her mom said. “At school, everybody loves her. At my job, everybody loves her.”

“She was sweet and friendly. She was bilingual. She can speak English and Spanish,” Trinidad added.

Now, on top of mourning her daughter, Trinidad is shouldering the weight of paying for her funeral.

“I’m from Dominican Republic. I don’t have any idea about how expensive was … the funeral here,” she said.

The family has started a GoFundMe to help with the costs.

Gerardo Avila lived on the same block in Staten Island for more than 20 years, according to his neighbors.

“He’s such a good man. Practical man. He’s nice to everybody,” said neighbor Nancy Zapata, 60. “He likes to work all the time washing the car. A very simple man,” she added.

Avila used to give Zapata’s niece driving lessons, she said. “I’m shocked. I pray for them.”

The 50-year-old man driving the Audi suffered minor injuries and was taken to the same hospital as Anheli and Avila.

No arrests have been made as police continue to investigate the crash.

The intersection where the collision occurred was renamed “Brianna Gabrielle Gioia Corner” in 2008 to honor a 20-year-old woman who died in a crash at the corner.

The car in which Gioia road was driven by a high school student without a license who veered into oncoming traffic and crashed after the right tire got caught in a gully.