Teen-ager paralyzed in crash prepares for new home
by The Star-Ledger Continuous News Desk
Sunday August 31, 2008, 7:41 AM

Preparations are being made to provide a temporary home for a 19-year-old Union City woman who remains paralyzed from the waist down, more than two months after the van she was in crashed on the New York State Thruway, according to a report in Gannett.

Yadira Velasquez, who immigrated to the United States illegally from El Salvador three years ago to be with her family, was enrolled in Emerson High School, and supposed to begin her senior year this week, the paper reported.

Now, she remains a patient at Bellevue Hospital in New York, after the June 14 accident. That morning, the van she was traveling in with 13 other women crashed into a concrete pillar, killing the driver and three passengers.