By Randall Chase/AP
When Yan Thou brought his family to America nine years ago from war-ravaged Cambodia, he looked forward to starting a new life. “My dream was to be an American citizen ... so my little sons could go to college,” he said.
Now, in the wake of a van crash that killed his wife of 37 years, his 16-year-old son and two other Asian immigrants, that new life is broken.
“I don’t know what to do now,” Thou sobbed, gripping a photograph of his dead loved ones in trembling hands. “I have no family. Every time I turn around in the house now, I feel lonely.”
Thou was one of 19 Asian immigrants riding in a van that flipped over on Interstate 495 on June 18 as they were traveling from their jobs in New Castle, Del., to their homes in Philadelphia. All but one passenger, Thou’s 16-year-old son Navy, worked at Pack & Process Inc., a contract-packaging firm in New Castle. Navy accompanied the adults that day to shop for a computer while they were at work.
Thou suffered a broken leg and other injuries in the wreck. His two daughters, Maly Yan and Chan Yan, also were injured.
Chan, 27, who began working at Pack & Process in 1998, doesn’t know whether she’ll go back.
“I’m not sure,” Chan said last week while sitting on the stoop of the three-bedroom rowhouse in south Philadelphia where her parents and youngest brother lived. “I feel bad, too, but not like him,” she said, nodding toward the living room, where her father sat on the floor on a pile of blankets and pillows.
“That’s the place that made my family die. I don’t want to go back there,” he said, sobbing. “It brings back bad memories. I don’t want to see 495 North again.”
The Immigration and Naturalization Service and the U.S. Department of Labor are investigating the occupants’ employment circumstances. Government officials have refused to say whether the occupants were legally-documented workers.
INS spokesman Lance Payne said agents would interview all the occupants before deciding on a course of action.
City officials in Philadelphia have no record of the temporary staffing agency for which the occupants reportedly worked, and police investigators found about $10,000 cash in the van.
Officials with Pack & Process have repeatedly refused to comment. Yan Thou, with his metal crutches close by and hospital bands still on his wrists, could barely contain his anguish.
Police say Maly Yan’s 1992 Dodge van clipped a tanker truck transporting 9,000 gallons of gasoline to Philadelphia. After colliding with the tanker, the van flipped at least twice, ejecting several occupants. Only two people in the 15-passenger van were wearing seat belts, investigators said.
Yan Thou suffered a broken leg and other injuries. Chan suffered a broken arm. Maly, 22, was released from the hospital late on July 4. Investigators said she has no recollection of the accident.
Yan Thou and Chan claim Maly tried to avoid the tanker truck, but the van’s steering didn’t work.
“Maly was turning the steering wheel all the way, and there was no reaction with the car,” said Thou, who claims the tanker driver repeatedly refused to let his daughter pass. “People in the back seat screamed ‘What are you doing?”’
Yan Thou sits on his living room floor, nursing his broken leg and broken heart, staring for hours at photographs of his dead wife, Oeurn Mam, and son. z
“Before he goes to sleep, he lays down and looks at them,” said 19-year-old son Vannak Thou, who left his pizza delivery job and moved back home to take care of his father. “He hurts right now.”
Navy studied American history, Latin, chemistry, algebra and Chinese at Bodine High School for International Affairs in Philadelphia.
“He was a good kid,” said Vannak, whose dad ordered him to throw away many of his brother’s belongings because they were painful reminders of his death.
The Thou family arrived in Los Angeles in 1992. They spent some time with an uncle in Maryland before another uncle brought them to Philadelphia. Now, Thou ponders life as a widower. He has no money to give his wife one final gift.
“My dream is to go back to Cambodia and bring my wife’s ashes and my son’s ashes to the temple,” he said. |
