Family and friends gathered Thursday evening at the Ward Street home of the father of a 27-year-old woman who was killed last week in a traffic collision on Ashby Avenue.
Kelli Zachery, 27, was driving to work when her car collided with an AC Transit bus around 6:30 a.m. on Thursday Feb. 8. The bus and car then careened into a parked truck and two homes on the south side of Ashby near California.
After meeting outside Kelvin Zachery’s home, where a Valentine’s Day memorial had been set up for Kelli on Wednesday, the 70-strong group walked across the street to San Pablo Park. They lit candles and walked around the perimeter of the park, passing an outdoor boxing class and a group playing soccer, before gathering on the basketball courts.
Once settled there, Kelli’s mother and father released two large bunches of pink balloons at precisely 6:28 p.m. Kelvin Zachery said that was because Kelli had died at 6:28 a.m., at the moment of the crash. He asked that everyone remember her every Feb. 8 at that time, and sent his thoughts and prayers to the driver of the bus that crashed into the red Honda Civic his daughter was driving a week before. Zachery, who led the sunset vigil, has been an AC Transit driver himself for 25 years.
See the gathering and hear Kelvin speak about his daughter in the video above, shot by Tracey Taylor.
