Memorializing by Graffiti?

Well, however the previous posts were expressed regarding the death of driver Abel Preciado, who crashed into a power pole in front of the old La Vida Mineral Springs site, and the two roadside memorials that sprung up afterward, the sight yesterday afternoon of the defacing of the surviving La Vida water tank, which has the deceased's first name on it, is a clear indication that someone close to him just couldn't leave well enough alone.

It's one thing to ponder a snap decision that led to tragedy, but deliberation in defacing something that doesn't belong to you actually takes away a lot of the sympathy manifested in the aftermath of mid-September's accident.

Why the two memorials weren't sufficient to express what happened when a tagging seemed like a good idea isn't really worth asking.

Is it too much to ask the good samaritan(s) responsible for painting over previous bouts of graffiti on the old tank to help once again?

A New Carbon Canyon Roadside Memorial

In recent days, a second roadside memorial has appeared for Abel Preciado, who died last month when a car he was driving crashed into a power pole in front of the old La Vida Mineral Springs property on the Brea side of Carbon Canyon.

This monument is on the pole replacing the one destroyed in the crash and is much more elaborate than the first memorial located a little further east.

As the photos here show, a great deal of attention was paid to the memory of the deceased, including handwritten notes, stickers, and a remarkable photograph of Preciado on a piece of the Camaro that he was driving when the accident occurred.

Clearly, this was a person who meant a great deal to his family and friends and this remarkable tribute is all the more lamentable because he was only twenty.

Carbon Canyon Road Fatal Accident Roadside Memorial

A few days after a young man died in a car crash on Carbon Canyon Road in front of the old La Vida Mineral Springs property in Brea, a roadside memorial has been created.

The accident led to the death of Abel Preciado, a resident of Chino who was a few weeks shy of his 21st birthday and whose family and friends left farewell comments on a poster board taped to a power pole a short distance east of the accident site and who also spelled out his name on rocks on the ground nearby.

There have been several such memorials along the state highway in recent years, including one for a young man on the eastern end of the roadway, another for a motorcyclist killed in a crash at Old Carbon Canyon Road, and a third for the bicyclist who was hit on Carbon Canyon Road just east of Fairway Drive.

Each time one of these is placed it serves as a reminder that, regardless of the circumstances of the passing, there are those friends and family members who are left to grieve an untimely end of someone they cared about.

Usually, these memorials stay in place for several weeks or months and are tended to, but inevitably this changes and they either are removed or left to gradually waste away. 

Anyone who takes the time to stop and look at these heartfelt remembrances can easily understand the loss felt by those who put them up.

Unfortunately, almost all of these tragedies were preventable.  Split second bad decisions generally account for them.