A young Arizona couple and their two little boys were killed in a devastating Labor Day crash that wiped out two generations of the same family in an instant.
Giovanni Huerta, 26, his wife, Kiah Jae Begaye, 26, and their sons, 4-year-old Dakota and 2-year-old Malakai, all died after their vehicle was struck head-on by a pickup truck on State Route 260 near Heber-Overgaard on Sept. 7.
The crash happened at around 12:30 p.m., according to local reports.
For Giovanni’s father, Joel Huerta, the loss still feels impossible to process.
“It’s like a dream, and I’m still waiting to wake up,” he told Arizona’s Family. “I wake up, and I’m still in the dream — more like a nightmare.”
“They were my world. My son, my only son. Two generations just gone like that.”
Authorities said the pickup truck involved in the crash was driven by 21-year-old Jesse David Lovato.
Lovato has since been arrested and is facing manslaughter and aggravated assault charges, according to local news reports.
Two people riding in the pickup — a 21-year-old woman and a 14-year-old boy — were also seriously injured and hospitalized.
It was not immediately clear whether Lovato had hired an attorney.
The tragedy has devastated both sides of the young family, who say Giovanni and Kiah had only just begun building their lives together.
The couple were high school sweethearts and had married just months earlier in April.
They were raising their two boys in Laveen, Arizona, where Giovanni worked as a mechanic and Kiah was in the process of launching a Native American clothing business.
Kiah’s mother, Chrissy Kaibetoney, said the family had so many plans still ahead of them.
“It doesn’t seem fair at all because they were so young,” she told Arizona’s Family. “They had a whole life ahead of them.”
“They had plans, goals and adventures they wanted to go on.”
Another loved one summed up the scale of the tragedy simply.
“It’s hard enough losing one person,” the family member told KSAZ. “We lost four, at one time.”
Dakota and Malakai had also only recently begun preschool, making the loss even more painful for relatives.
A verified GoFundMe was created to help the family cover funeral expenses. By Sept. 10, it had raised more than $57,000.
Organizer Veronica Uballe wrote that Giovanni and Kiah were “only 26 years old, with their whole lives ahead of them.”
“Dakota was just 4 years old, and little Malakai was only 2,” she wrote, adding that both boys had just started preschool.
“They were a family who should have had countless more birthdays, holidays, memories, and moments together.”
She asked supporters to keep the family in their prayers as they face what she described as “the unimaginable days ahead.”
