Relatives of late singer Selena Quintanilla were among the victims who drowned in the floods brought on by Hurricane Harvey.
“The family that drowned in Houston Texas were related to me,” Quintanilla’s father, Abraham, wrote on Facebook last week.
“Manuel Saldivar and his wife Velia and 4 of their grandkids left their flooded house to go somewhere where there was safety. When they cross[ed] a bridge, a wave of water swept the van and push[ed] them in to the bayou,” he continued. “The driver was saved, but Manuel and his wife and 4 grandkids drowned … Manuel’s mother Carolina was my father’s 1st cousin. My condolences to their family.”
The driver, Sammy Saldivar, escaped through a window in the van and was rescued later while clinging to a tree.
Sammy’s parents, Manuel and Belia Saldivar, and his brother’s four children — Devy, 16, Dominic, 14, Xavier, 8, and Daisy, 6 — were fleeing their flooded Greens Bayou, Texas, neighborhood when they crossed a flooding bridge on Sunday, Aug. 27. The road dipped after they crossed the bridge, filling the vehicle with water and trapping the family inside.
The vehicle and the bodies were discovered Wednesday after waters in the area receded.
In a separate post, Abraham, 78, said that the Corpus Christi, Texas, museum dedicated to the memory of his daughter, who was murdered in 1995, was still intact.
