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‘We forgive her,’ victim’s sister says of driver in Windsor Hill crash

CHP officers walk next to emergency vehicles
California Highway Patrol officers and other first responders at the intersection of Slauson and La Brea, scene of a fatal multi-car crash, on Thursday.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
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The sister of a woman killed in a multi-car crash last week has offered words of forgiveness for the driver held responsible for the collision.

Investigators arrested Nicole Lorraine Linton, 37, a registered nurse, in connection with Thursday’s high-speed crash in Windsor Hills, which left five people dead. Asherey Ryan, a 23-year-old pregnant woman, was among the victims, along with her 1-year-old son and boyfriend. Only Ryan has officially been identified by the coroner.

“I just want to tell her that we forgive her,” Sha’seana Kerr, Ryan’s sister, told KTLA on Saturday while gathered with family and friends at the crash site. “She will have to live with this for the rest of her life. That’s why she was spared. We understand it already.”

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Asherey Ryan poses for a photo outside an apartment.
Asherey Ryan, shown last September outside her home in Hyde Park, is the only victim of the crash to have been officially identified by the coroner.
(Cotie Davis)

On Thursday afternoon, Linton was going as fast as 100 mph in a Mercedes-Benz when she ran a red light, hitting several vehicles and causing some of them to erupt in flames, according to the California Highway Patrol.

Family members, friends and strangers have have left flowers at the site.

Kerr, one of Ryan’s younger sisters, said Ryan was her “first best friend.” The pain of losing their family members felt worse, she said, as it sank in that they were gone.

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“The first person I knew. The first person I probably had a conversation with,” she said. “She’s my only big sister. Every day we take our sons outside and we walk them around the block. Every day. The neighbors know us. Today, I had to take that walk alone with my son.”

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