Santa Monica Copes with Tragedy

By Oliver Lukacs and Jorge Casuso
Staff Writers

July 17 -- You could see its effect in the tighter grip on a child's hand while crossing the street, or the extra glance back. You heard about it on street corners and coffee shops, as friends and strangers tried to grasp the senseless.

It even took the shape of sobs, sometimes uncontrollable, or the plaintive strains of "Amazing Grace" played on a saxophone beside a small shrine of candles and flowers erected in honor of the victims of 86-year-old Russell Weller’s two-and-a-half block ride with death.

It had been roughly 24 hours since the worst manmade disaster in the City’s history exploded into the national spotlight, and there were signs everywhere of the runaway trip through a crowded farmers market that left ten dead and dozens injured.

On the corner of 4th Street and Arizona Avenue, where Weller hit the gas pedal of his '92 Buick LeSabre, sat a single Virgin of Guadalupe candle. Along his path, the wheels of news vans rested on a patchwork of fresh tar spots covering the chalk marks where the bodies fell. Click to enlarge images

Bayside District officials who visited Downtown merchants door-to-door Thursday saw a range of responses to Wednesday's tragedy: "Everything from breaking down in tears, to disbelief, to anger, screaming," said Kathleen Rawson, executive director of the district.

The support from the merchants, Rawson said, has been "phenomenal."

"People are here today. They're spending time with each other," Rawson said. "I saw how small a community this really is. Each of us, we're all here. We know the vendors, the people who spend time in the market. It's a small community."

While stores opened as usual and people went about their daily business, it was still too soon for those who witnessed the tragedy first hand to embrace the normalcy that was starting to settle in all around them. “I am in awe,” said Megan Sheehy, general manager of Laconda del Lago Restaurant on the Promenade. “It’s an eerie feeling today. There are cars driving on the street today that dead people were on yesterday.”

It was hard, Sheehy said, to adjust when just a day earlier the street “looked like a hurricane (had come) down the center… everything to the right and the left -- tents and vegetables and people were sprawled everywhere -- but down the center was nothing.”

Some merchants didn't want to talk. "I don’t want to relive the horror,” said a worker at Table Manners, a kitchenware store on Arizona one block from where the car embarked on its path of destruction.

Visitors to the Promenade also expressed a range of emotions as they tried to explain a seemingly senseless act. Some said they weren't angry, calling Wednesday's tragedy an "accident" that will not deter them from visiting the popular tourist destination.

“It’s just a sad accident, just an unlucky accident,” said Payman Rashidi, 33, who came from the Valley to show his sister just in from Germany the world-famous Promenade. “I am not mad. I’m sad because people are dead, but I am not mad.”

Rashidi said he would continue to come to the Promenade, because death is not site-specific. “Everywhere people die. It’s just how it is.”

Some habitual visitors to the market said they stayed away Wednesday, thanks to a quirk of fate that may have spared them from a brush with death.

Lisa Ross, who habitually goes to the farmers market, sometimes with her 9-year old daughter, Lianna, thanked “God” for the late repairman who kept her from going to the farmers market Wednesday.

“I thank God something made me stay home yesterday. We come. We’re always here,” Ross said caressing the blond head of her daughter standing next to her. “My phone was ringing off the hook, everybody thought I was there.

"But everywhere you go you never know-- you could be in wrong time and the wrong place, but you can’t live in fear,” Ross said.

Ross joined the flurry of speculation about what may have caused the accident and how it may have been prevented. Perhaps Weller’s cane got stuck on the accelerator, she theorized.

Regardless of cause, Ross said, “it is very upsetting. He is very elderly and probably shouldn’t be driving. How he could just keep going with bodies hitting? I don’t understand that. I think there should be consequences.”

Ross, like many others randomly interviewed by The Lookout, suggested installing temporary metal poles to shield pedestrians from another potentially deadly accident.

Above: Family friend collects money for funeral of victim Cindy Palacios Valladares,3 (left)

“I was asking myself the question if it’s morbid to come back," said Lynch, who has come to the market every Wednesday and Saturday for the past five years. "I feel a little guilty.” Lynch said it was somewhat of a divine “fluke” that she didn’t come on Wednesday. “I feel like I should pay my respects to the people who took a blow that might have been mine. I guess it wasn’t my day to die.”

Click pictures to enlarge

It is bad for business, he said, “because they see the flowers and think it happened here… But I understand. What are you going to do?”

Rosa said the accident was inevitable. “I don’t think the market was a good idea. It’s too big. There’s too many people. There was no way to prevent it.”

He always thought “there was a (safety) hole in the market,” Rosa said. Instead of tying to “blame somebody” for the accident, the market should be “better organized,” he said.  

Sheehy, whose restaurant puts food out on the market twice a month, said she hoped to be there on Saturday.

“If we're (scheduled) we would (participate), just to support the community and also to support the farmers and their livelihood, not ignore the problem," Sheehy said. "Life goes on, and we need to too.”