That’s what stricken wife and mom Mary Rose Ballocanag of New Jersey said to her aunt in their first conversation since a wrong-way driver killed the 53-year-old nurse’s husband and four daughters in a horrific crash in Delaware, the relative said Sunday.
Ballocanag of Teaneck said she was dozing peacefully in the front passenger seat of the family’s minivan as they drove home along Route 1 Friday afternoon from a Fourth of July vacation in Ocean City, Md., according to her aunt, Lydia Agas.
She was jolted awake into a nightmare: her husband slumped lifelessly behind the wheel, his head resting on her chest, Ballocanag told Agas.
Their minivan had been hit head-on by a Ford F-350 pickup truck that had veered from the southbound lane, across the grassy median, and into the northbound lane, cops said.
Ballocanag’s 61-year-old husband, Audie Maniquis Trinidad, and their daughters — Kaitlyn, 20; Danna, 17; and twin 14-year-olds, Melissa and Allison — were all killed, officials said.
The driver of the pickup truck — named by cops on Sunday as Alvin S. Hubbard Jr., 44 — and his unidentified 30-year-old male passenger were treated for minor injuries and released, cops said.
It remains unclear why Hubbard drifted into the oncoming lane, and no charges had been filed as of Sunday afternoon.
Ballocanag, a nurse at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan, remains hospitalized in Delaware with several broken bones — and, heavily sedated, still struggling to process that she’s the only one left from her immediate family, relatives said.
“She knows they are all gone, but she is under heavy sedation, so it’s not sinking in yet,” said Audie’s teary brother, Daniel Trinidad.
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