TRUCK TRACTOR KILLS TWO IMMIGRANTS, SMASHES INTO HOUSE

Nuria Luisa Fernandez and her son Jorge Manuel Lopez are dead, along with
whatever dreams they brought from Cuba to Miami. They were killed in a
spectacular traffic accident, crushed by a speeding truck tractor that
crossed the centerline on Southwest 17th Avenue.

It happened late Thursday night. Lopez, 25, was killed on the spot. His
mother, 53, was dead on arrival at Jackson Memorial Hospital. Miami Police
made the names public Friday afternoon after looking all day for a relative
to tell.

"They found a distant cousin," police spokesman Delrish Moss said. "It's
believed that all the other relatives are in Cuba."

Fernandez and Lopez are recent arrivals about whom little else is known.
They had an apartment at 1319 SW Third St., in a poor east Little Havana
neighborhood where thousands of other Latin American immigrants have started
new lives. Police don't know where they lived in Cuba, exactly when they
came here or whether they had found jobs. Their car, driven by the son, was
a gold-colored 1988 Chevrolet, ownership uncertain.

Police blamed their deaths on truck driver Antonio Felipe Fernandez, 39,
accused of being high on cocaine.

Lt. William Schwartz, chief public information officer of the Miami police,
was at the the scene of the accident, which happened at 11:20 p.m. It
reminded him of a movie scene, staged for spectacular effect.

Car was `accordioned'

"The victims' car was accordioned," he said. "It's very clear they knew
their fate. The son, who was driving, tried desperately at the last minute
to swerve to the right to get out of the truck's way. It caught them
broadside, pushing them into that house."

That was at 403 SW 17th Ave., on the corner of Fourth Street. The victims
were crushed as the truck hit their car on the driver's side. It was pushed
up against the corner house and fell aside there while the truck completely
penetrated the cement wall and a window, breaking into a room and knocking
Yamile Romero, 16, and Diana Garcia, 17, off a bed where they were sitting,
watching television.

Truck driver Fernandez staggered through the house and out. Maria Elies, a
neighbor, watched him. "He was walking out the front door when the police
came up, one by each side, and grabbed him by the arms, like to help him,"
she said. "He seemed like a drunk from inside the house. Then he slumped
down and sat on the front step."

That's right, Lt. Schwartz said, but the police didn't think Fernandez had
been drinking: "He had white residue all over his nose. . . enough to charge
him with possession of cocaine."

Witnesses told police the truck, a 1991 International tractor without a
trailer, was traveling fast from north to south, weaving side to side across
the centerline before it struck the Chevrolet, which was going north.

Police: Truck weaving

"We're still trying to figure out what he was doing out with that truck,"
Schwartz said. "Our traffic homicide detectives estimated it weighs 15 tons.
Another really disturbing thing is that Fernandez, just prior to this fatal
accident, absolutely flattened a parked car at 102 NW 21st Ave. He was
weaving in and out of traffic, speeding like a runaway train. I'm not even
sure he knew he'd hit this car. He seemed not to be sure what had happened.
It looks like he didn't bother to brake."

Schwartz said the truck belongs to James Cheeseman Trucking Co. at 20390 SW
155th Ave. Cynthia Kinder, who police said apparently is a manager there,
refused to take news questions about Antonio Fernandez. "I don't want to
talk to anybody," she said.

A public record mentions one other traffic accident blamed on Fernandez,
with a Cheeseman truck in 1997. The company's headquarters then were at
Elmer, in southern New Jersey. But no phone number for the company is listed
there now.

Fernandez, of 181 NW 97th Ave., was examined at Jackson, then taken to jail.
He has a 17-year record of arrests for cocaine and marijuana possession,
disorderly intoxication and cop-fighting.

Driver faces cocaine charge

By the time police dropped him off at the jail on Friday morning, they had
added cocaine possession to his dossier, plus a bundle of DUI-related
traffic charges: two each for vehicular manslaughter, causing injuries and
property damage, one for causing serious injury and one for leaving the
scene of the previous accident. Bail on all the charges totals $47,000.

"If he can't post that, he can take his chances in bond court in the
morning," said Morton Lucoff, a Circuit Court spokesman.

Fernandez' first arrest, in 1981, was for disorderly conduct and resisting
arrest. In 1982 he was arrested for cocaine possession and carrying a
concealed gun, and was sentenced to probation. Circuit Court records of
eight other other offenses through 1997 indicate that he never spent more
than a night or two in jail when arrested. e-mail: amarkowitz@herald.com