India Post News Service
LOS ANGELES: Syeda Arif was very happy. Mother of two children, two and a half year old daughter Ikra and 5year old Ayman, the Bangladeshi national, Syeda was looking forward with great excitement to the celebrations of Eid. She had bought traditional clothes for her husband, family and friends.
It was 3.00pm on a glorious California sunny afternoon in the San Fernando Valley and Syeda deftly maneuvered the heavy traffic, and parked her Honda near her friend’s house. She came to the back of the car , hoisting little Ikra in her arms with Ayman close by. She opened the trunk and was beginning to take out a few packages.
The next moment Syeda’s life was shattered. A car driven by a young man at 90 mph plowed into a parked car which then crushed Syeda and her son. Her daughter flew through the air. Syeda now lies in hospital, having lost part of her leg, her son who was clinging to life hooked up to machines at UCLA Medical Center died after two days. Her daughter is in a critical condition. Her husband Arif is devastated. On TV he sobbed despairingly, "My son was my life.
What shall I do? How can this happen to my family?" Weeping friends are shell shocked, numb with grief. How could this happen? They were like my own family. How is Syeda going to survive? Why? Why? Cry out the devastated members of the family and friends.
The Bangladeshi community arrived in hordes at the Northridge Hospital emergency room to comfort the husband Arif who was completely distraught. It was an impromptu race that resulted in the gory tragedy. Nineteen year old Armando Gamboa Ayon and forty four year old porn star in a red 2000 Camarao and Brian Gilbert Barnes in a Nissan Maxima had been playing tag cutting in and out of traffic for more than a mile, when they reached Syeda at Amestoy Ave and Sherman Way.
The two men were strangers to each other, had stopped at a traffic light, and promptly decided to challenge each other. Barnes hit his brakes suddenly, and Ayon cut across him and swung to the lane closest to the curb. He was coming at such a high speed he found himself hitting a parked car near where Syeda stood with her children. Barnes took off.
Ayon stopped and police arrested him as he stood amid limp bodies and widening pools of blood on the concrete. Barnes later turned himself in. Ayon and Barnes are charged with attempted murder. According to Daily News, Los Angeles Police Department Deputy Chief Michel Moore said "This is not a fight of 5 year olds on a playground. It’s ridiculous.
They both should have stopped." Not much is known about Ayon, but Barnes’ arrest record revealed he is a 6 foot, 198 pound man who works in the adult film industry. This year, within ten months, there have been 100 road rage crashes which include high speed street racing, as well as reckless driving. Two days earlier in another part of Los Angeles, in El Monte, a mother and her two children were killed when a street race went wrong and a car plowed into them. Seven years ago Arif, a computer engineer, had come to the United States and moved into a four bedroom home in Northridge.
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