The list grows every year.
Santa Clarita added one name Wednesday during its Evening of Remembrance at the city’s half-acre Youth Grove at Central Park.
Mayleigh Jo Beaver, 21, of Newhall, died in a single-car crash near the intersection of Copper Hill Drive and McBean Parkway on Dec. 3.
Beaver is the most recent addition to the names read aloud in an act of recognition and as a way to help the healing process for the friends, family members and loved ones left behind.
“It helps a little bit,” said Susana Mejia, 26, who was a friend of Beaver’s and came Wednesday with several mutual friends to honor Beaver’s memory.
All 119 names read are also remembered with a tree stump in their honor to represent their life cut short by a tragic traffic collision.
Before Santa Clarita Mayor Jason Gibbs gave his opening remarks Wednesday, he said that, as a father with young children, an event like this is always a tough one to attend.
“It’s so important that we come together to remember those that we’ve lost,” Gibbs said, “and use this for healing or understanding and for working to make sure that other families don’t have to experience the heartache in our community that many have had to face.”
The city asks the community for names each summer, which are then added and recognized during the annual event.
Linda Storli, a governing board member for the William S. Hart Union High School District, felt it was important to attend the event each year because the former teacher wanted to remember the students who have died during her time there due to crashes and collisions.
There have been a number of measures that have helped reduce the numbers over the years, she said, and kids have become more aware, but it never gets any easier to hear about such a death.
“It’s so sad,” she said. “I can remember their names. I remember their faces. The first funeral I went to, I thought I would be OK — and I cried like a baby,” she added.
A call-and-response prayer also was shared by Alice Renolds, a mother whose sons, Daniel and Timothy, were two of four people killed in a February 2000 car crash on Soledad Canyon Road by a driver who was ultimately convicted of vehicular manslaughter. Timothy was 18 and Daniel was 15 at the time of the crash.
Representatives from the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station, as well as the offices of Assemblywoman Pilar Schiavo, D-Chatsworth, and Sen. Scott Wilk, R-Santa Clarita, attended, as well as Jon Hatami, a Valencia resident and deputy district attorney who handles the prosecution of the most severe crimes involving minors.
“As a child abuse prosecutor handling cases of murdered children, a parent never gets over losing a child,” said Hatami, who’s also a parent. “But if I can be there to listen and just show I support and care, that’s what community is all about.”
