Three California teenage friends died in an Oct. 31 car crash; two of which graduated from the Menlo Park fire explorers and planned to apply to the fire academy.
Matthew Cruz, 18, Ricardo Torres, 19 and Andrew Gonzales, 19 died when their vehicle ran off an embankment. Torres and Gonzales were members of the Fire Explorer Post 109. Torres father is a fire district master mechanic, KGO-TV reported.
“There’s a lot of grief, a lot of sorrow just because of the gravity of the loss especially with three young men who were starting the beginning of their lives and were so close,” said, Chief Harold Schapelhouman of the Menlo Park Fire Protection District.
“They would’ve been amazing firemen,” says Fire Engineer Eric Mijangos, who supervisors the fire district’s Explorer program. “I would’ve been a very proud instructor as well as someone that would’ve been there to watch them graduate.”