Community mourns loss of SHS student

Services are set for Wednesday evening and Thursday at Our Lady of the Valley Catholic Church for Daniel Figueroa as the community mourns the death of the Sahuarita High School junior who died Friday night in a traffic collision that involved four other SHS students.

Police were still investigating and had not yet issued any citations, as they were facing sharply conflicting accounts from witnesses, Sahuarita Police Department Sgt. Matt McGlone said Tuesday.

One of those involved, Jenaye Barry, 15, a freshman, remained hospitalized Tuesday, school officials said.

A funeral Mass will be offered at 10 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 24, at Our Lady of the Valley Catholic Church, 505 N. La Canada Drive, Green Valley. Visitation will be held from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 23, at Our Lady of the Valley Catholic Church, with a Rosary beginning at 7 p.m. Burial will be at the Green Valley Mortuary and Cemetery, 2200 N. La Canada Drive, Green Valley.

Figueroa, 16, a Sahuarita native and a member of the high school’s varsity basketball player, is survived by his parents Dan and Sonia; his sisters, Nicole and Maya; his grandparents, and a host of aunts, uncles and cousins.

Students held an informal candle-light event at the high school parking lot over the weekend, officials said.

School officials brought a large team of counselors from the Tucson, Sunnyside and Marana school districts to help Sahuarita staff in coping with the tragedy on Tuesday, the first day of school after the crash, Sahuarita Assistant Superintendent Manny Valenzuela said.

“We are setting up support centers on campus for kids who are in need of individual counseling and counselors are doing outreach into classroom, talking to students, especially the classes where the students [in the accident] were enrolled. We are trying to come together with mutual support to get through this very tragic event,” Valenzuela said.

Figueroa was the second SHS student to die in a car wreck this school year. Beth Brakke died in a one-car crash in September near Interstate 19 and Sahuarita Road.

“We’ve been through this before, but you never become accustomed to something like this. It hurts equally every time something like this occurs, It’s very difficult to cope with it, but you make an effort to come together and support one another,” Valenzeula said.

Figueroa was a passenger in a Mitsubishi Eclipse that was traveling eastbound on Duval Mine Road just east of the northbound Interstate 19 onramp when it and a Ford pick-up truck heading west on Duval Mine Road collided.

Both those inside the vehicles and independent witnesses were split about evenly as to whether the Mitsubishi had a green left turn arrow or whether the Ford truck had a green light, McGlone said. It is very unusual for witnesses to a traffic collision to be so evenly split and to have such widely diverging accounts, McGlone said, and the police were still examining the physical evidence to see if it could shed light on who was responsible.

The others in the accident included: Mitsubishi driver Daniel Martinez, 16, a junior; Ford truck driver Dustin Bean, 17, a senior; truck passenger Barry, and truck passenger Cody King, 16, a sophomore. Martinez reportedly was treated at UMC and released while Bean and King declined treatment.

It was not known if Figueroa or the driver of the Mitsubishi were wearing seat belts. Bean was wearing a seat belt and it was believed the two passengers of the truck were not wearing belts, McGlone said.

pfranchine@sahuaritasun.com | 547-9738

Sports Editor Nick Prevenas contributed to this report. Comment online or leave condolences at www.gvnews.com.com.