Lili Trujillo, whose daughter was killed in a street-racing crash six years ago, speaks at high schools to warn about the dangers of racing.
Now she wants to bring her “Street Racing Kills” talk to colleges.
On Wednesday, she’s scheduled to speak about the dangers of street racing with students at College of the Canyons.
Her talk begins at 11:30 a.m. and goes until 1:30 p.m. in Boykin Hall, room 105.
“I don’t know how many people are going to be there,” Trujillo said Tuesday. “But, even if there is just five people there, it is important to save one life. I don’t want any parent to go through what I’m going through.”
On Dec. 7, 2013, Trujillo’s daughter, Valentina, was the passenger in a car driven by a man challenged to a street race. The driver ran a red light and collided with an SUV.
Trujillo’s daughter died on impact.
The event changed the course of Lili Trujillo’s life instantly and forever.
She explained the transformation on her website: StreetRacingKills.org.
“My 21-year-old son and I headed to the crash scene to find out everyone was taken to Harbor UCLA emergency room,” she writes on her site about the fatal crash.
“When we arrived at the hospital, I asked (Valentina’s friend) Mazzy where Valentina was. ‘Valentina died,’ her friend responded as she cried hysterically. I collapsed to the floor while my son picked me up.
“I kept thinking this was all a misunderstanding and she wasn’t gone, but law enforcement confirmed Valentina was killed. My son had to identify her body with a picture taken by their phone. Anything that followed became a blur.
“Living with the pain of my daughter no longer here has become my new norm,” she wrote, noting she began speaking at high schools about street racing soon after the crash.
She found Santa Clarita after finding Willie Littlefield at one of her speaking engagements, six months after Littlefield’s daughter died in a street-racing crash.
On Feb. 27, 2016, Dealio Lockhart raced his Dodge Challenger with another driver on Interstate 5 in Commerce, causing a chain-reaction collision that killed Littlefield’s 19-year-old daughter, Michelle, and Brian Lewandowski, 18, both of Valencia, and Scott Treadway, 52, a UPS truck driver from Mira Loma.
Last month, Lockhart was sentenced to more than 22 years in prison after pleading guilty to 18 counts connected to the crash.
Littlefield convinced Trujillo to take her “Street Racing Kills” talk on the road to college campuses, beginning with COC.
“Lili Trujillo, founder of Street Racing Kills, will be on campus (Wednesday) at the invitation of the Associated Student Government,” COC spokesman Eric Harnish said Tuesday. “Her story is painful, but powerful, and it’s an important message for students to hear.”
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