GA Family Killed In Fiery I-85 Crash Remembered: 'It Can’t Be True'

ATHENS, GA — Relatives of a Salvadoran family killed in a fiery multi-vehicle crash on Interstate 85 in Jackson County are remembering their loved ones as they struggle to grasp the magnitude of the tragedy.

The crash happened around 4:15 p.m. on Monday on I-85 northbound, south of mile marker 147 in Commerce, the Georgia State Patrol said.

Police said a semi-trailer was following too closely and struck the rear of a 2014 Dodge Grand Caravan. This caused a chain reaction involving the van and four additional vehicles. Following the crash, both the Dodge van and the tractor-trailer became engulfed in flames.

The Jackson County Coroner's Office confirmed that all eight people inside the van died in the crash.

Those in the van were all members of the same family, who were on their way to shop at a local mall when the crash occurred, according to law enforcement. Those killed in the crash were 42-year-old Maribel Ramírez and her five children, Justin, Andy, Natali, Evan and Kenia, who was three months pregnant. The crash also claimed the lives of Kenia's husband, Darwin, and her 3-year-old son, Kayle.

• RELATED: 8 Family Members Among Those Killed In Fiery Crash On Georgia's I-85

Relatives back home in the small Salvadoran town of Tepetitan were left reeling from the loss of a family that had built a life in the United States after Maribel migrated nearly two decades ago.

“It’s something painful that we’re living through," Carmen Gavidia Ramírez, Maribel's sister, told The Associated Press. “I couldn’t believe it when they called us Monday night to tell us they had died. I still can’t believe it — it can’t be true, but it is.”

Maribel was the oldest of her siblings, and the first to migrate to the U.S. from their 4,000-person town, which sits nestled next to a volcano and sugar cane fields stretching along the San Vicente department in the center of El Salvador. Gradually, she brought her four brothers and her daughter Kenia, who was 24 years old at the time of the crash, to the U.S.

“My sister Maribel left the way many Salvadorans do. She worked here as a day laborer, and one day she said, ‘I want to go,’ and she took off,” Gavidia remembered.

Eva Velasquez-Benitez, the mother of Kenia's husband, Darwin Ventura, told WSB-TV she's still in shock following the crash. In an interview with the station, she described the devastating impact and how the crash claimed the lives of three generations of her family.

“It’s hard because we don’t know what to do," Velasquez-Benitez said, adding Kenia and her son were about to go to the doctor to find out the sex of their baby.

Gavidia said El Salvador's Foreign Ministry contacted them to express solidarity and offer help in the often arduous and costly process of repatriating the bodies. Her brother, Rafael, in the United States, had been speaking with the government to handle paperwork so the family members can be buried in their native country.

“Though we don’t know if it will cover all or only part of the costs," she said. "We don’t know if they’ll be able to bring them back because it costs around $100,000 — that’s what we’ve been told.”

A GoFundMe page started by a family friend to help with the cost of transporting and burying the eight family members had collected over $23,500 as of Thursday morning.

The truck driver who struck the van was identified as Kane Aaron Hammock, 33, from Gainesville, according to state authorities.

Hammock has been arrested and charged with eight counts of vehicular homicide (second degree), one count of feticide by vehicle (second degree), one count of following too closely, one count of no registration and one count of driver to exercise due care.

The Georgia State Patrol also said that Hammock did not have registration for his truck at the time of the crash.

“It’s a tragedy, man. It’s sad that it happened,” Matthew Adams, a friend of Hammock’s, told WSB-TV when asked about the crash.

According to his friend, Adams was an owner-operator truck driver and an independent singer-songwriter. He had owned his truck for around 10 years.

The National Transportation Safety Board, in coordination with the Georgia State Patrol, has opened a safety investigation into this fatal crash.

The crash also remains under investigation by the Georgia State Patrol Specialized Collision Reconstruction Team.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.