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I-4 Casualty Was In U.S. Looking For A Better Life

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By KAREN BRANCH-BRIOSO, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 17, 2008

TAMPA - Six months ago, Adrian Moran Gomez made an excruciating choice.

He said goodbye to his wife and four young children in Honduras. He left them behind to work alongside his father and brothers in Lakeland.

"Back in our country, things are so hard," said Francisco Gomez, one of Adrian's brothers. "He had to work here because he wanted to make a better life for his family."

That plan ended Jan. 9. He and his father and another family member were en route to carpentry jobs for United Forming. Their red, 1994 Plymouth minivan drove into a predawn wall of fog and smoke on Interstate 4 that claimed four lives that day.

On Sunday, Moran Gomez also died from the injuries he suffered in last week's pileup. He was 30.

Five other family members in a silver minivan at the crash site searched amid smoke and screams and explosions for the red van. They found it. Adrian wasn't inside.

"He was the only one missing. They found him in the grass, face-down," in very serious condition, said William McBride, the family's Orlando-based attorney.

McBride called Moran Gomez's wife in Honduras that day from Lakeland Regional Medical Center's intensive care unit.

"I told her he'd been involved in a very serious accident and we were going hour by hour. She began to cry heavily," said McBride, a former minister. "We were able to pray with her."

Back home in Honduras, Moran Gomez's wife used to wait for the money her husband wired her from his paychecks. Moran Gomez lived simply in Lakeland, just as his father and brothers and cousins did. That way, they could send more money home.

Those paychecks dried up with the crash. All eight members of the family suffered injuries in the pileup - three of them were hospitalized. Two were discharged from the hospital. One had a broken leg, the other a fractured sternum.

Much of the family in Lakeland gathered somberly this week at a weathered 35-year-old mobile home where Moran Gomez's cousin, Jerónimo Gomez, lives. According to the Florida Highway Patrol, Jerónimo Gomez was driving the silver 1991 Ford minivan and Marco Moran, Adrian's 51-year-old father, was driving the red minivan Adrian rode in.

Both vans were part of a 10-car crash on eastbound I-4. They were just behind the major fiery crash in which four others died that morning.

On the dirt yard outside the mobile home, several men sat quietly Tuesday afternoon. Adrian's brother, Francisco, came outside to say most just didn't feel like talking. They hadn't yet made funeral plans.

Back home in a small town in Honduras, Moran Gomez's wife waits for her husband's return.

"At this point, they're trying to return Adrian back to his home in Honduras to be buried," McBride said. "They're trying to raise funds to do so at this point. They have no savings."

Reporter Karen Branch-Brioso can be reached at (813) 259-7815 or kbranch-brioso @tampatrib.com.

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