Make California Post a Preferred Source New photos of a survivor of the horrific crash at a North Hollywood Metro station that killed three people showed the victim severely injured in her hospital bed.
A fundraiser launched for Sylvia Figueroa said she was in critical condition after an alleged drunk driver plowed his SUV into a sidewalk vending area outside the station Tuesday night.
The crash left three dead, including street vendors Maria Peck and Teodora Villalobos. The third person killed in the wreck has yet to be identified.
The fundraiser for Figueroa said she suffered fractured ribs and underwent surgery.
Police identified the driver as Ihor Demianenko, 61, who investigators said was speeding and drove around another vehicle before losing control.
Demianenko was arrested on suspicion of DUI at twice the legal limit and booked on three counts of killing. His bail was set at $6 million.
Peck was a mother of five and Villalobos, 57, a mother of three from El Salvador.
The women were longtime vendors near the busy intersection of Lankershim and Chandler boulevards, where neighbors said they had become familiar faces in the community.
“There’s going to be a hole right here coming right here for anybody that’s just in the community regularly,” neighbor Fran Shelia Straughter told NBC 4.
Witnesses told the outlet that two women selling hot dogs were thrown into the air by the impact of the white SUV.
Mayor-elect Nithya Raman mourned the victims in a post on X, writing: “My heart breaks for the families and loved ones of those killed in North Hollywood last night.”
She said reports that some of the victims were vendors who had spent years serving the community made the loss “especially devastating.”
