Deadly Crash Once Again Tests Family’s Faith

SAN DIEGO —  Six years ago, Ot Bonsynat and his family were sitting in their Long Beach home when a bullet crashed through their living room window, killing his wife and 17-year-old daughter.

Bonsynat, a churchgoing man who fled the Communists in Laos and Cambodia, raised his surviving five children alone, teaching them that God and education are important ingredients in life.

That faith was tested again over the weekend as devastating tragedy revisited Bonsynat and his family.

He looked on in horror Saturday from a separate car as a fiery crash on Interstate 5 near Oceanside killed his 12-year-old daughter and left his 17-year-old daughter burned over 50% of her body.

The day had begun on a happy note as Bonsynat’s daughter, Only, 17, was preparing to leave for college.

She had won a scholarship to Point Loma Nazarene College in San Diego, where she planned to study to become a teacher.

Only graduated from Long Beach’s Jordan High School last spring and was looking forward to going away to school after years of being the surrogate mother for her younger brother and sister.

“She’s done it all since mom died,” her oldest brother Sangvorn, 27, said. “She went to school, came home and cooked and cleaned and was so responsible taking care of us all. She took on all that pressure. She’s only 17, but she kept our family together.”

The critically injured girl was the only mother that her 6-year-old brother Johnny had known.

“Emily has gone to God. Mommy [Only] is in the hospital,” Johnny said Sunday at the UC San Diego Burn Center, where the family gathered to await word on Only’s condition.

Ot Bonsynat, 48, was in shock Sunday after seeing the accident, but relatives are confident that his unwavering faith in God, which earlier helped him survive the death of his wife and daughter, will get him through.

“Our family has gone through a lot, but our belief in God and our support from the Christian fellowship has pulled us together,” Sangvorn Bonsynat said. “We can’t control tragedies, but we know that He is there and won’t leave us unattended even when there is a tragedy.”

The elder Bonsynat, who was traveling in a car ahead of his two daughters Saturday, saw the Toyota 4-Runner driven by Only swerve out of control as she changed lanes.

She hit a Mustang before her vehicle skidded on its side and burst into flames at 12:50 p.m, California Highway Patrol officials said.

The Toyota was heading south at 65 mph on Interstate 5 near Harbor Drive. A couple from Brooklyn, N.Y., traveling in the Mustang suffered minor injuries, authorities said.

Ot Bonsynat was torn between staying in his car to make sure that his 6-year-old son Johnny didn’t jump out and trying to rescue his daughters from the flames, Sangvorn said.

An unidentified motorist rushed to the burning Toyota and pulled Only from the flames. The motorist was unable to rescue Emily, 12, who was burned beyond recognition.

Only was airlifted to the Burn Center, where her three brothers, a sister-in-law and two cousins waited Sunday outside the intensive care unit. Only has third-degree burns on her legs, arms and back and is scheduled for surgery on Monday, relatives said.

“Dad called me at work and said, ‘Son, your sister is not with us anymore,’ ” said Sangvorn, who works as an assistant restaurant manager at the Marriott Hotel and Marina in downtown San Diego.

Ot Bonsynat spent much of Sunday with relatives in San Diego after visiting the hospital, Sangvorn said. He said his father was trying to understand the shattering loss and searching for the strength that helped him cope with his wife’s and daughter’s slayings on Nov. 13, 1990.

On that night, Ot Bonsynat was eating dinner with his family when a gunman opened fired through the living room window, killing his wife, Thongsy, 41, as she was breast-feeding their youngest son, Johnny. Also hit was his 17-year-old daughter, Nalon, who died two hours later.

After the shooting, Bonsynat moved his family from central Long Beach to north Long Beach and found solace in religion. He and his family attended the New Life Church, where their faith became even stronger.

“The whole family is a churchgoing family,” said Thavy Bonsynat, a 22-year-old cousin who lives in Long Beach.

Bonsynat and his wife were Buddhists and farmers in Laos. They left Laos just one step ahead of the Communists and moved briefly to Cambodia, where again they fled Communists, arriving in a refugee camp in Thailand in 1975, Sangvorn said.

In 1979, the family came to the United States, where they converted to Christianity because of the help they received in this country from a number of Christians, he said.