Commerce City – It took four minutes for 11-year-old Mercedes King’s heart to stop after doctors took her off life-support.
Lisa King, who moments before had lain down in Mercedes’ hospital bed after doctors convinced them her little girl was gone, couldn’t face her.
“I never would have been able to leave if I did,” King, 36, said Tuesday, crying and rubbing her daughter’s plastic, orange hospital bracelet that she still wears.
“When they gave her the MRI tests, they had to take off her earrings, and I put them on. I still can’t take them off, and I still haven’t accepted that she’s gone.”
Standing at the corner of East 60th Avenue and Monaco Parkway as cars whiz by, Lisa King and her husband Mark Filley, 43, prop up flowers, cards and stuffed animals left by friends and relatives of Mercedes.
“There’s an angel at this corner now,” Filley said, looking over the flowers. “People need to slow down at this intersection, though. Nobody passes through here going the speed limit.”
It was at this corner last Friday morning that a car blew through a red light and smashed into the passenger side of a Dodge Neon carrying Mercedes to her first day at Kearney Middle School.
Her funeral services will be at 10 a.m. Saturday at Our Lady Mother of the Church, 6690 E. 72nd Ave. Following that will be a reception at the middle school, 6160 Kearney St., giving Mercedes the day in school she had been looking forward to, her parents said.
Yesica Moreno, the 24-year-old driver of the Grand Prix that smashed into the car driven by Mercedes’ brother, was not injured. Mercedes’ brother, Marcus King, suffered a broken arm.
Police have not filed charges against Moreno, but the investigation is ongoing.
The crash happened a block from Mercedes’ home. The impact caved in the car around her, and a bystander helped cut the girl from her seat belt to remove her.
When Marcus King came to, he called his father and told him that “Mercedes isn’t waking up.”
Filley arrived just in time to see his daughter’s eyes closing for the final time.
“I knew at that moment she was gone – I just knew it,” he said.
Contributions to help Filley, a carpenter, and Lisa King, who manages an International House of Pancakes in Brighton, pay for their daughter’s funeral can be sent to Rocky Mountain Law Enforcement Credit Union, account number 23007352, 700 W. 39th Ave. in Denver, 80216.
Staff writer Manny Gonzales can be reached at 303-954-1537 or mgonzales@denverpost.com.
