Crash in Dense Fog Kills 3, Hospitalizes 2

A few days ago, Bridgette Williams wrote a letter to God.

She told God about her goals: buying a house, getting married and raising her four children in a Christian home. She told God how much she loved her life, how she planned to make it better and how she was grateful.

“Lord, because you are my shepherd and I will never forsake you. Thank you so much.”

But that handwritten letter might have been an omen; it ends in mid-sentence, one thought left unexpressed: “And if I could . . . “

Just before midnight Monday, Williams, 29, was killed along with her 7-year-old son, DeJahn, and her boyfriend, whom relatives identified as Tyrone Love, 34.

The three died when the car Love was driving in the fog-shrouded night ran a stop sign at 130th and Alameda streets in Willowbrook, crashed into a concrete wall and burst into flames.

A 27-year-old male passenger and Williams’ 8-year-old daughter suffered head injuries in the crash. Their conditions were not available Tuesday.

Relatives gathered Tuesday and struggled with Williams’ death, at a time when she still had goals to reach.

“Whenever God calls you, it’s time to go,” said her sister Shevette Williams, 33, her eyes filled with tears. “She completed her mission. She did what she was asked to do.”

The California Highway Patrol is investigating the accident, but heavy fog and excessive speed apparently played roles.

“Due to the heavy fog, [Love] wasn’t able to see the stop sign,” said CHP Officer Armando Perdomo. “As a result of the fog he should have been traveling at a lower rate of speed.”

On 130th Street on Tuesday morning, neighbors recalled the night of thick fog, flames and a collective effort to help.

The sound brought Nydia Gonzalez and Chris Arviso running to the crash. They found the car smashed against the wall and burning.

“I yelled to call an ambulance,” Gonzalez said. “It was like the car is going to blow up. I was scared. I was thinking there’s somebody in there. . . . I wasn’t sure what to do.”

The doors of the car were stuck, Gonzalez said, so Arviso tried kicking the lock. When that failed to jar the lock loose, he used a rock to break a window. By then the man on the passenger side was gaining consciousness.

“Chris was telling him he has to get up, he has to get out,” Gonzalez said. Arviso and another man helped pull the victim from the car.

On the other side of the car, Gonzalez and another man saw the 8-year-old girl in the back seat on the driver’s side. The man pulled the child out and handed her to Gonzalez, who placed her on the sidewalk, covered with a jacket, and talked to her while they waited for an ambulance.

“She was in shock,” Gonzalez said. “You could just tell she was hurting all over.”

The two survivors were taken to hospitals.

The accident occurred at a T-intersection where the concrete wall blocks the continued eastbound flow of traffic on 130th Street.

The wall was put up to keep people from driving or falling into a trench being dug along a 10-mile section of the Alameda Corridor project, said Phil Hampton, a spokesman for the $2.4-billion project designed to speed rail traffic into and out of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

The concrete traffic barrier, topped by a chain-link fence, has been in place since Aug. 1, Hampton said.

“That barrier is put up when excavation begins in certain areas and is intended to facilitate public safety,” he said.

At some T-intersections along Alameda Street, traffic signs are posted on the chain-link fence above the concrete wall: two diamond-shaped signs covered with reflectors and a sign indicating that traffic must go left or right.

Warning Signs Put Up

At the accident site there were no such signs--until Tuesday morning when two workers from Tutor-Saliba construction company posted them. The men said they have been hanging the signs since before Christmas and that Tuesday’s placement had nothing to do with the accident.

“They should have some signal lights there to let everybody know they’re getting to the end of the block,” Shevette Williams said.

At her Long Beach home, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews and in-laws came together to remember Bridgette Williams. They said she was the youngest in a family of 11 children, the one everybody spoiled, the one everybody tried to protect, even after she was grown and a mother herself. They still treated her like she was special.

“I wish I could have been there to just help her, to save her,” Shevette Williams said.

Memories of their days growing up provided light moments on a day full of tragedy.

“She got us in plenty of trouble,” said older brother Shawn Williams. “Nobody could mess with her.”

“Spoiled, spoiled rotten,” Shevette Williams said, smiling. “We were all protective of her because she was the baby.”

Bridgette Williams was also the one who could make you laugh, her relatives said, even if you were mad at her, and who could find the right thing to say if you were down.

She was always on the go, her siblings said. She loved to sing, and when she was younger tried her hand as a rap artist, performing her own lyrics in a group with her brother. She loved to dance and go to clubs. But she also loved going to church. Last summer she was baptized.

“She felt she wanted to start a whole new life,” sister Sonya Williams said.

Bridgette Williams lived in Compton with her children and Love and worked as a security guard for Tandem Temporary Services at a grocery store in Lynwood.

“She was a hard-working mother,” Shevette Williams said, “trying to do the best she can, always there for her kids.”

Her son, DeJahn, excelled in reading at school and “was a sugar baby,” Shawn Williams said. “He loved sweets.”

“That was her right-hand man,” he said. “Wherever she went, he went. He took care of her.”

The brothers and sisters who worked so hard to protect Williams, the baby girl, are now left to care for her three children: 8-year old Deja, 13-year old Tramel and 11-year-old Ronnell.

“They’ll have a lot of aunts and uncles that’ll take care of them and raise them right,” Shevette Williams said. “They’ll know their mother was a beautiful person and her spirit is always around.”

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Times staff writer Douglas P. Shuit contributed to this story.