Three memorials were vandalized along Broadway and Country Club Lane. NBC 7 San Diego spoke with two families who are devastated and heartbroken that someone would do this to their loved one\u2019s memorial.<\/p>\n
Norma Tapia and her husband visit their son\u2019s memorial about every three days.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s filled with baseballs, flowers, a cross, and items that keep their son\u2019s spirit alive.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy son\u2019s spirit left here. It was his last breath,\u201d Tapia said.<\/p>\n
Their 13-year-old son, Rodrigo Tapia Jr., better known as \u201cJunior\u201d, was killed last April when the driver of the car he was travelling in ran a red light and crashed into another vehicle.<\/p>\n
Police later determined that driver, Alexander Tito Oroz, was driving under the influence.<\/p>\n
When Norma and her husband visited their son\u2019s memorial today, they were devastated to find it had been vandalized.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey took out all his flowers, his cross. That cross means a lot… Our friend made it from that dance floor, he danced on that night so it means a lot for us and they took it down. They dropped everything. Everything was vandalized, the lights were thrown, his picture was bent, they also broke another light that we had,\u201d Tapia said.<\/p>\n
Junior’s memorial was not the only one damaged by vandals.<\/p>\n
\u201cHer cross that I had lit up was really bent over, like they purposely tried to bend it. Her vases, I had two of them on each side, four total, taken out, and you can see the little light they just pulled it apart and they threw it. The flowers were everywhere,\u201d Ruby Espino said.<\/p>\n
This December will mark five years since her mother, 42-year-old Veronica Espino was also killed at this same intersection.<\/p>\n
That crash was also caused by an intoxicated driver.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very disheartening and it\u2019s very disappointing to hear that somebody just deliberately went out of their way, for whatever reason, just to destroy a memorial that was meant for someone who tragically passed away specifically at this site,\u201d Espino said.<\/p>\n
Both Espino and Tapia came to clean the mess left behind by the vandals.<\/p>\n
They hope it doesn\u2019t happen again.<\/p>\n
Tapia said they will try to install cameras in the area to avoid it happening again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three memorials were vandalized along Broadway and Country Club Lane. NBC 7 San Diego spoke with two families…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":155123,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,10087,3549,7264,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-155122","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-escondido","12":"tag-san-diego","13":"tag-sandiego","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115048525593301756","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}