Crash Victims’ Families Turn to Prayer for Strength : Tragedy: ‘I don’t know what else we can do,’ says relative of four killed in automobile crash. CHP says lives might have been spared had seat belts been worn.

Friends and relatives of a family that was nearly wiped out Saturday in a car crash after attending a church service offered prayers again Sunday--this time for the dead and three relatives still hospitalized.

Five people died in the head-on collision on Santiago Canyon Road in El Toro, including four members of a Walnut family and the driver of a pickup truck that rammed the family’s vehicle.

“We believe that the number of fatalities would be much lower and the seriousness of the injuries for the people hospitalized would be much less if seat belts had been worn,” said California Highway Patrol Officer Jim Lindquist in Santa Ana. “That’s why this accident was such a tragedy.”

The pickup pulled onto busy Santiago Canyon Road near Irvine Lake and crossed the center line into the path of the four-wheel drive truck driven by Joe Cruz Norman Mendoza.

With relatives caravaning behind in other vehicles, the family was on its way home from a memorial Mass and picnic with nuns at St. Michael’s Abbey in El Toro. The event commemorated the death a year ago of Fernando Mendoza, an older brother of Joe Mendoza, according to a nun at the abbey.

“(Fernando Mendoza) helped build a shrine behind the abbey, as a place where his family could pray,” said a member of the Rosarian Dominican Sisters at the abbey. “The family first started coming here about six years ago after learning of the abbey from other Filipino families.”

The four people who died at the scene were Joe Mendoza, 37, who worked at TransAmerica Life Cos.; his 10-year-old daughter, Charlene; her 69-year-old maternal grandfather, Vicente Sanchez, and the driver of the pickup truck, Nahum Rincon, 40, of Ripon in Central California.

Mendoza’s pregnant wife, Maria Mendoza, an employee of the Southern California Gas Co., died a few hours later at Western Medical Center-Santa Ana. An autopsy determined Sunday that her fetus was not developed enough to be considered a fatality under state law.

Western Medical Center reported Sunday that Mary Sanchez, 67, Maria’s mother, remained in critical condition with multiple injuries.

The Mendozas’ 16-year-old son, Joe, and 17-year-old nephew, Eric Mendoza, were in stable condition at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo.

Marilyn Mendoza, 40, of Chino Hills, who is the mother of the injured 17-year-old Eric, said Sunday that she and others visited the boys at the hospital. Joe was in a neck brace but was able to walk in a hospital corridor.

“Both families plan to pray together,” said Dante Sanchez, son of Vicente Sanchez, and a neighbor of the Mendozas. “I don’t know what else we can do.”

The Mendozas are members of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton parish in Rowland Heights. “The family is very well known in the community,” said Msgr. Michael Killeen, pastor of the church. “The parish community was really in shock,” he added.

The patriarch of the family, Leonard Mendoza Sr., plays the accordion in the church choir.

As the CHP investigation continued Sunday, officers said that neither speed nor consumption of alcohol appeared to be a factor.

“The witnesses that we’ve talked to put both vehicles at about the legal speed limit,” Lindquist said.