Church, community raise money for daughters of young mother killed in police involved car accident

SOUTH BEND, Ind. --- Church goers are raising money for the daughters of a young mother who died on Friday in a police involved car accident.

After Sunday’s afternoon mass at Our Lady of Hungary, the group Luz de Cristos talked about the loss of 22-year-old Erika Flores.

“El sabe lo que bien,” said the leader of the group.

The phrase translated means God knows that it will be okay. Karen Carrizosa said God came first in Flores’ life and behind Him were her two daughters.

“She was doing everything for them, worked all the time for them, and did everything she could do for them,” she said. “And that’s what hurts us the most to see those girls be without their mom.”

Father Kevin Bauman said Flores’ daughters were at mass on Sunday, the first mass without their mom.

Friends said Flores was coming home from work on Friday. The county prosecutor’s officer said at Kaley and Western Avenue, South Bend Police Officer Justin Gorny and Flores’ cars collided.

Flores died at the hospital, according to the latest release from the county prosecutor’s office.

“We’ve gotten together as a community to support them, to support her family, her mother, her sister but most of all her little girls,” said Carrizosa.

The church is raising money to help pay for Flores’ funeral costs and to take care of her girls. Click here for a link to a Facebook fundraiser her family set up in order to raise $10,000.

“I know she’s in heaven with God and she is really happy seeing that the whole community, the whole city, everybody is just getting together to look out for her two little girls” Carrizosa said. “And I think up in heaven she’s there thanking everybody.”

Carrizosa said Flores was a positive, supportive, and hardworking person. She said any rumors saying Flores may have been intoxicated on the morning she died are false.