A Tragic Turn

Emily Manzano wanted her daughter to have the perfect wedding, so she came out of early retirement to pay for it.

That's the kind of mother she was, said her daughter, Cathy Manzano. The mother was heavily involved with the planning for a year and was determined that her daughter's 270 wedding guests would have a wonderful time.

To honor the 62-year-old Brandon woman's wishes, her family will go ahead with the wedding today, despite their shock and grief that she and two relatives died in a car crash Friday morning.

The Mercedes-Benz she was driving was filled with women - all relatives of the bride - anticipating a joyful day of making memories. In an instant, three were killed and two were seriously injured.

Cathy Manzano, 36, faced a difficult choice.

"I talked about it with my dad," she said. "We decided my mom would want to have the wedding anyway. It was her plan all along. She planned it for a whole year."

"We decided we can't just not do it because she's not going to be there. We wanted everybody to come together to celebrate my mom and celebrate my wedding."

She and her fiancé, Cory Jones, 27, will recite marriage vows today at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Ybor City.

'Incredible Collision'

Hillsborough County sheriff's spokesman J.D. Callaway said deputies smelled alcohol on the breath of Kenneth Stewart, the Lakeland driver of the sport utility vehicle that collided with Manzano's Mercedes-Benz C240 at the intersection of Lumsden and John Moore roads. They took a blood sample from Stewart, 35, for analysis.

Manzano was traveling south on John Moore when Stewart's Dodge Durango, traveling west on Lumsden, struck her Mercedes on the driver's side.

No charges have been filed against Stewart. He was taken to Lakeland Regional Medical Center along with two passengers in serious to critical condition, but he was treated and released.

"We have no reason to take him into custody at this time," Callaway said Friday afternoon.

Sheriff's investigators said the impact knocked the Mercedes onto Lumsden's southern curb before it came to rest in the median.

"There were no skid marks from either vehicle," Callaway said. "So it was an incredible collision."

The accident also claimed the bride's cousins, Sonia Medders, 58, of Oceanside, Calif., and Juliebeth Olega, 37, of Clifton Heights, Pa.

Emily Manzano and Medders died at the scene. Olega died at Brandon Regional Hospital.

Emily Manzano's sister, Lily Foster, 73, and niece, Victoria Weaver, 46, both of Sparks, Nev., were taken to Tampa General Hospital in critical condition, Callaway said.

Crash investigators closed the intersection for nearly six hours.

Civic Involvement

Emily Manzano and her husband, Willy, were among the pioneer families in Tampa's Filipino community. The family moved to Brandon in 1977 from New Jersey. Both were past presidents of the Philippine American Association of Tampa, the first Filipino organization in the Tampa Bay area, said family friend and wedding planner Joey Omila.

Emily was also heavily involved with Ang Bisaya, a group in which most members speak the same Filipino dialect.

"Emily was a very helpful person - very bubbly, always very energetic, and not the quiet type," Omila said. "She was the life of the party. She's not a background person."

Emily Manzano asked Omila to help coordinate her only child's wedding five months ago, he said. The wedding will have a Catholic Mass infused with a traditional Filipino ceremony where a veil is placed over the bride and groom and they exchange coins to symbolize the passing of wealth to each other, Omila said.

Medders was to serve as principal sponsor. This role is traditionally filled by a close friend or a family member - someone the couple can go to for guidance and support.

Weaver was to present the bread and the wine, and Foster was to be the candle sponsor in the wedding.

Cathy Manzano said Olega came to the United States from the Philippines about 10 years ago. She has four children and a husband. She brought her youngest child with her because he's the ring bearer.

"She's really a sweet girl," the bride said. "She loves her kids and her husband very much."

Medders, she said, had a boyfriend and adopted two other cousins who lost their parents to a fire several years ago. "She took care of them when they were little," Cathy Manzano said. "She's really nice, too."

Nearly 40 people are in the wedding party, with four bridesmaids, four groomsmen, three flower girls and 28 Filipino elders who will be the couple's godparents.

The crash also affects the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office because Willy Manzano is a community service officer with the agency.

The bride said her mother was leading a three-car caravan of wedding guests from Tampa through south Brandon about 3 a.m. in her beige 2004 Mercedes. Willy Manzano was driving a pickup, and a cousin was driving another car. They were taking the out-of-state relatives who had arrived at Tampa International Airport earlier in the night to stay at the Manzano house.

The other family cars were some distance from Emily Manzano's, and one passed the accident scene in the dark. Its occupants did not realize what had happened until they got to the Manzanos' Jefferson Street home and saw the Mercedes was not there.

A couple of cousins walked back up John Moore Road and came upon the crash site, Cathy Manzano said. Willy Manzano called his daughter at her Port Tampa home about 3:30 a.m.

"He said my mom had been in an accident and it looked like they were flying them out somewhere," Cathy Manzano said. "He said it doesn't look good."

She immediately called her fiancé, and he came over. He had been to his bachelor's party on Thursday night.

"He's here, and he's been here for me," she said late Friday from her home. "That's why I love him. He's a really big help. I don't know what I'd do if he wasn't here."

The couple met at work at Florida Blood Services nearly two years ago, he said. He proposed in May.

They are both big hockey fans and have run 5K races together. She has season tickets, and he took a part-time job at the St. Pete Times Forum so he could go to Tampa Bay Lightning games with her.

"He makes me laugh," she said of her fiancé. "He puts up with a lot of the things I do. We just kind of blend together real well. I just wanted to take care of him, and he wanted to take care of me."

Jones agreed: "She was the one I wanted to be with the rest of my life"

He met Emily Manzano during a housewarming party when Cathy Manzano moved into her new home in Port Tampa.

"She was very flamboyant," he said. "She was quick to laugh and wanted to make sure everyone was having a good time."

Honeymoon On Hold

The wedding reception will be tonight at the Embassy Suites on Fowler Avenue, but honeymoon plans for Costa Rica and Las Vegas are postponed. The bride's father will do most of the funeral planning, she said.

"Right now, I'm kind of tired," Cathy Manzano said Friday afternoon with a cracking voice. "I don't really know what to think. I'm supposed to be happy, but I can't be completely happy about it. That's just what happens. You never know when you're going to lose somebody. I didn't even get to say goodbye to her."

Her mother wanted to dance and made sure there was a big dance floor for the party. But "I don't think we'll be doing any dancing tomorrow. We'll just eat some dinner, and that will be it," Cathy Manzano said.

Her mother worked to get every detail right.

"Now it's kind of my mom's wedding," she said.

Stewart Has Lengthy Record

Callaway said Stewart was interviewed briefly by deputies. He told them he and his two passengers, Tommy Weaver and Anthony Close, both of New York, were "looking for a friend and got lost," Callaway said.

The trio were rushed to Lakeland Regional Hospital, Callaway said.

The Dodge has New York plates, but investigators don't know whether it belongs to Stewart, Callaway said.

Records from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement show Stewart has a lengthy list of traffic violations dating to 1996, including failure to yield, speeding, driving with a suspended or revoked license, driving without insurance, failure to obey a traffic signal and failure to pay traffic fines. Emily Manzano had a clean driving record.