CHANDLER, Ariz. — Willis Thompson and Gilbert Franco were coworkers. They rode in the landscape truck together, they worked together...and they died together.
Thompson and Franco were two of the five people killed last week when their landscape truck was smashed between two semi trucks, along with another car.
The cars burst into flames, killing all five people.
Thompson, 37, was a father of one from Laveen.
“If all he had to give you was the shirt off his back he would do just that," his sister Latefia Eagletail said. "An amazing brother, uncle, father, son..."
Franco, 28, had only been with AAA Landscaping for four days, according to his family in Sierra Vista.
"It's aching at my heart, I need my son, I miss my son," his mother Nanci Almanza said. "My son was my everything."
DPS is investigating the driver of the truck that hit both cars from behind for suspected distracted driving.
Traffic was stopped on I-10 at the time because of another car crash on the freeway.
"These are not 'material', these are lives that we lost," Almanza said. "Five of them. You know, it's horrible. It should have been prevented.”
The company that owned the truck that hit the landscape truck was owned by a trucking company called MBI. According to federal Department of Transportation records, that company has had 26 crashes in Arizona in the past two years. Until Thursday's crash, only one resulted in any injuries.
But the DOT statistics also show eight citations for MBI drivers using cell phones while driving.
MBI declined to comment.
"How can that be possible?" Almanza asked. "How can this company be operating with 26 incidents?”
"This could have been avoided," said Laneshia Eagletail, Thompson's niece. "That's literally your job is to keep your eye on the road."
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