Maria del Carmen Castellón, stands with a photo and the welding gear of her late husband, one of six workers killed in the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse. At a Sept. 17, 2024, news conference, she called for better working conditions for workers. Photo by Danielle J. Brown
On the afternoon of March 25, Miguel Angel Luna Gonzalez stopped to give his wife a kiss before heading to his construction job, when she noticed a photo of the two of them on his phone.
“That afternoon, before heading into work, he stopped by and gave me a kiss. I noticed in his screensaver, a picture of us, and I was happy,” Maria del Carmen Castellón said Tuesday. “I was not to know that these are the last moments I would share with my husband.”
Hours after that kiss, Gonzalez, a welder, was working on the Francis Scott Key Bridge when it was struck by the container ship Dali, sending the center span of bridge plunging into the Patapsco River, killing him and five other workers.
“That day, a wound was opened in my heart that will never heal. Something I do not wish to anyone,” Castellón said through a translator at a Tuesday press conference hosted in Baltimore by the immigrant-advocacy group CASA.
She spoke at the event to announce that family members of the victims plan to pursue legal challenges against Grace Ocean Private Ltd., the owner of the Dali, for alleged negligence that led to it striking the bridge on early morning hours of March 26.
The ship was headed out of the Port of Baltimore when it lost power as it approached the bridge. Without power to steer, the 984-foot, fully loaded container ship drifted into a column of the Key Bridge, causing it to collapse.
A photo and gear of Miguel Angel Luna Gonzales, a construction worker who died in the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse. Photo by Danielle J. Brown.
Six of the eight workers on the bridge at the time died. The victims were all immigrants from Latin America.
Shortly after the bridge fell, Grace Ocean Private Ltd. filed a petition in federal court to limit how much it could be held responsible for financially for the accident.
Matthew Wessler, an attorney representing three of the families, explained that “there are no specific damages at this time” in the claims from the families.
“Right now, all the proceeding is designed to do is focus on whether the ship can limit its liability,” Wessler said Tuesday. His firm, Gupta Wessler, is also representing the families of José Mynor López and Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, who also died in the bridge collapse.
Wessler said that if the families’ claims are successful at this stage, that would open the way to sue for damages. If the shipping company is successful, then any financial recovery could be limited.
The families have until Sept. 24 to file a claim that the company’s negligence led to the deaths of their loved ones. Wessler said that the three families he’s representing will file claims. He said he is coordinating with other law firms that are representing the other three families, who also plan to file claims against the shipping company.
Gustavo Torres, executive director of CASA, said that in the nearly six months since the bridge collapse, the families are “seeking justice.”
“Months have passed since the disaster, and today we can finally say that we will hold Grace Ocean Private accountable,” Torres said. “We will not let Grace Ocean escape the consequences of the negligence.”
But Torres and Castellón don’t just want financial compensation for the lives lost. They also called for stronger worker protections and regulations so that people are safer when working dangerous jobs.
The bridge collapse is an immigration story
Castellón said she and her husband had ambitions for a different future.
“That wound in my heart is because he was a companion to me for over 14 years. Six of them, I was blessed to say, we were married for them. We had dreams and aspirations,” she said.
Castellón said that they were hoping to open a restaurant together and had just looked at a potential location the day before the bridge fell.
“Miguel never stopped showing me love and affection through his love letters,” she said. “His love letter ended with ‘I love you,’ words that I carry in my heart that I now carry with anxiousness. They fill me with anxiousness because I long for the love that now can never be.”
She said one of the goals now is to make sure “that no one else has to suffer this tragedy that we have, and justice means preventing future tragedies.”
“Real justice would have meant that my husband never died, where he would be here with me, continuing the life of joy and laughter,” ” Castellón said. “Real justice means that no son has to miss their father, no wife has to navigate this world alone, and no grandchild has to know their grandfather through a distant picture.”
“We ask to be able to provide jobs that do not run the risk that we will be separated from our loved ones,” she said.