Eight people, including two mothers and five children headed out of town for a late summer family vacation, were killed in a head-on car crash in Oregon on Monday.
Erika Carter Boquet, 29, was driving on a remote eastern Oregon highway when a vehicle in the oncoming lane veered over and collided with her car, according to state police.
Bouquet was killed along with her three children: Isabella, 11; Elisabeth, 8; and Tytis, 6. Another woman in her car, Kyla Brown, 28, also died along with Brown’s two children, Arianna, 10, and Xavier, 2.
The crash also killed the driver of the other vehicle, Mark Robert Rundell, 48.
Brown was the girlfriend of Boquet’s father, Louis Johnson, according to KOMO News.
The two women had loaded their five kids into the vehicle Monday morning at their Tacoma, Washington, homes and were headed to Las Vegas for a family vacation. Johnson was already in Nevada when he learned about the tragedy.
"They were so young. Their whole world was ahead of them,” Johnson told KOMO News.
He said the trip was a special family vacation for his daughter, Erika.
“I thought her coming down on vacation was a way I could show her that, you know, 'You’re doing great. I believe in you.' And then to have this happen,” he said.
Boquet’s brother, Jesse Tate, told The Oregonian that his sister volunteered at a Tacoma-based nonprofit she created to help provide resources to low-income families.
“She was outgoing, personable, made friends everywhere she went, and her kids took after her,” Tate said. “They all just cared about everyone around them.”
Tate created a GoFundMe page to help pay for funeral costs.