Riverside family mourns parkway accident victim

In the packed living room of the Riverside house, one of Rosa Llivisupa's 12 surviving children eased her into a chair as religious candles flickered to one side. She clutched a clump of tissues, lifted a framed photo of her deceased son closer to her face, and sobbed.

Luis F. Sarmiento, 21, was fatally struck by two cars on the Garden State Parkway in Kenilworth in Union County, shortly before 1 a.m. on Monday as he crossed the busy highway.

He had just survived a two-vehicle crash on the parkway, State Police said. They could not immediately say why he was trying to cross the road.

Several more photos of Sarmiento were on a table, along with flowers and a donation box.

An uncle had dropped off five similar boxes earlier at stores around the Burlington County township in an effort by the impoverished family to raise enough money to send Sarmiento's body back home to Ecuador.

"All the grandparents, the sisters, and brothers, they want to see him for one last time," said Sarmiento's father, Luis G. Sarmiento, 47. As he spoke, a cousin, Manuel Llivisupa, translated.

Monday evening, about 30 family and friends, some from as far away as Danbury, Conn., and Upstate New York, crowded into the two-story house on Webster Street that the victim, six of his siblings, and the parents called home.

They came to mourn him and comfort the family.

Luis F. Sarmiento, the seventh of 13 children, worked with his father in landscaping and helped support six siblings in Ecuador.

Family members said it would cost $25,000 to $35,000 to send Sarmiento's body home to Machala, in coastal El Oro province. Like many immigrant families that survive on meager incomes from on-and-off jobs, the family doesn't have much money, relatives said.

Grief piled on grief for the family on Monday.

Sarmiento's parents still had not seen their son's body. They said they were told that the Union County Medical Examiner's Office was closed for the Presidents' Day holiday.

The elder Sarmiento clutched a photocopy of a business card from authorities with the address of the morgue. He planned to go there on Tuesday.

Relatives said the young man had moved to the United States about four years ago - following his father, who came here 13 years ago and his mother, who came nine years ago.

When the weather was warm, Sarmiento worked a landscaping job with his father, relatives said.

He was headed north to work a part-time job at a Montvale grocery store when tragedy struck, family members said.

He was hit by one car in the center left southbound lane and again in the left lane by another vehicle, the State Police said. He died at the scene.

Authorities found identification linking him to an unoccupied Honda Accord, police said.

The death remains under investigation, police said.

Inquirer staff writer Claudia Vargas contributed to this article.