At one-year mark, memorials planned for victims of fiery crash

Allie Hariri will never forget the last meal he had with his 19-year-old daughter.

On the last Friday of last September, the pair went to Black Angus Steakhouse in Burbank, where they talked and laughed for two hours.

That night, she passed him in the doorway on her way out with a big smile and said, “Bye, papa,” he recalled. “I said, ‘Don’t stay long.’”

Hours later, Malak Hariri, along with four of her friends, Stephen Stoll, 23, Sugey Cuevas, 19, Sameer Nevarez, 18, and Sebastian Forero, 20, lost their lives in a fiery, alcohol-fueled car crash in which the sedan slammed into a guard rail and a concrete freeway abutment and subsequently caught fire. One passenger, Savannah Underwood, 19, survived the crash.

It will have been one year on Sunday.

“This was the most difficult year in my family’s life,” Allie Hariri said. “We believe she’s now in good hands. She’s over us, watching out for us, we have that feeling.”

Malak Hariri’s family is planning a memorial at the Burbank Islamic Center, located at 7838 San Fernando Road, at 2 p.m. on Sunday, after which loved ones will visit her grave at Pierce Brothers Valhalla Memorial Park, located at 10621 Victory Blvd. in North Hollywood.

Sugey Cuevas’ family is organizing a Mass for the five victims on Sunday at 1:30 p.m. at Saint Finbar Catholic Church, located at 2010 W. Olive Ave. in Burbank. Loved ones also plan to visit Pierce Brothers Valhalla afterward, where she and Forero are also buried.

Claudia Cuevas, who is getting married in January, remembered her younger sister as a happy person who was always laughing or smiling.

“Knowing she won’t be there,” Claudia said through tears, of her wedding, “I would’ve loved for her to do my hair.”

Sugey Cuevas was a cosmetology student at Marinello Schools of Beauty.

Valerie Lucas, the mother of the sole survivor of the crash, said Friday that she thinks of the victims and their families every single day.

On her mantle are pieces of tree bark that were pulled out of her daughter’s hair after the crash, next to a sign that reads, “We love the five angels,” she said.

Her daughter, Lucas said, has been to nine funerals in recent years — those of the five crash victims, as well as those of three Burbank teens killed recently in the crash in Santa Clarita, and that of one friend who took his own life.

“I cannot fathom how they’re coping,” she said of Burbank’s youth. Ironically, Underwood had declined an invitation to hang out with the teens involved in the Santa Clarita crash the day of the accident because her leg was sore, Lucas said.

A Los Angeles County coroner’s report released three months after last year’s crash revealed that the driver, Stoll, had a blood-alcohol level of more than twice the legal limit, as well as marijuana in his system.

The lesson is not lost on the loved ones of those killed.

Days after the crash, a friend of the five created an online pledge never to allow herself, or others, to drink and drive, which drew more than 600 signatures.

“You have to think about your actions,” said Claudia Cuevas, 23, warning against not just drinking and driving, but also texting while behind the wheel.

The recent news of three Burbank teenagers who died in Santa Clarita, she said, really hit home. “People should be more careful when in the car…be quiet, don’t be yelling,” she said.

Meanwhile, Mohamed Hariri, Malak Hariri’s brother, has joined the campaign against drunk driving, picking up various speaking gigs on the dangers of drunk driving on school campuses and for those convicted of drunk driving.