Community Leaders Unite to Prevent Similar Tragedies after Fatal Santa Maria Car Crash

SANTA MARIA, Calif. (KEYT) - Santa Maria community leaders will gather Wednesday afternoon to discuss the recent car crash that killed five teenagers and work towards creating meaningful prevention strategies for the future.

"We are having an emergency coalition meeting today at 4:00 p.m. at Vida Church in Santa Maria," said Gabi Delgado of Fighting Back Santa Maria Valley. "We are gathering different community members, law enforcement, medical providers, non-profits in different sectors within the community to have a listening session to understand what has happened and to help ensure that this doesn't happen again."

Delgado is the coordinator of a community coalition that is led by Fighting Back Santa Maria Valley, a non-profit advocacy organization.

"Our coalition works with different members of the community to help make sure that families and youth are safe," said Delgado. "We do this by inviting different members of the community so they all have a voice and what our coalition does monthly is provide a space where youth are being heard within the conversation. Adults, school board members, school administrators, everyone has a voice."

While the coalition meeting on a monthly basis, following Sunday's car crash, it was decided to gather community members and hold a coalition meeting as soon as possible.

"Unfortunately, it's really tragic that we are meeting on this occasion," said Delgado. "But I think this poses an opportunity for us to help make sure that our community doesn't face this type of hurt again, that another family member is in feeling this pain. Our community is being on top of prevention efforts going forward. Change isn't going to happen immediately. It's going to take time to develop a strategy and different prevention efforts, but our community is so strong, and that is such a great value that Santa Maria has. I'm confident that going forward, constantly meeting with our community partners, we can learn from this and help the City of Santa Maria."

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