“BALTIMORE —
Julio Cervantes Suarez endured the unthinkable when a
100,000-plus-ton cargo shipcrashed into the bridge he was working on, collapsing the critical structure and sending him tumbling into the dark, unforgiving waters below.
Cervantes Suarez, 37, was one of
sevenconstruction workers who had been fixing potholes on the Francis Scott Key Bridge when it went crumbling down into the Patapsco River in the early morning hours of March 26. The men, who
were all Latino,
included his nephew, brother-in-law and friends he had known for years. They were all on break, some inside their cars and others in
construction vehicles, when the bridge fell.
Cervantes Suarez, who spoke exclusively to NBC News for the first time since the bridge collapse, said he saw his family members and friends disappear into the river one by one, knowing he was next. His nephew, Carlos Daniel Hernández, whom he considered a son, was the first to fall.
In what he thought were his final moments, he turned to God.
“I thanked God for family he gave me. I asked him to take care of my wife and kids. And I asked for forgiveness for everything I’ve done,” Cervantes Suarez said in Spanish, his voice breaking.
After his truck slammed into the river, Cervantes Suarez said the water “came up to my neck” and he was unable to open the doors to escape.
He manually rolled down the vehicle's window to exit, swallowing water as his truck became completely inundated and sank.
“That’s when I realized what happened. I looked at the bridge and it was no longer there,” Cervantes Suarez said.
He had seen his companions as they fell “and how the water covered them,” he said.
I started to call out to each one of them by name,” he said.
“But no one answered me,” he said.
There was only silence, darkness and cold. “
More below:
“I think maybe there is still a goal for me,” Julio Cervantes Suarez said in an exclusive interview with NBC News.
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