A Navy hospital corpsman, his wife and another man are dead following a head-on crash near Naval Station Great Lakes early Saturday, according to the Navy and a Lake County Sheriff’s spokesman.
Lake County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Sgt. Christopher Covelli said Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Jose Antonio Barerra, 24, was driving a 2008 Nissan Altima northbound on Green Bay Road south of Blanchard Road in Beach Park, Illinois, around 4:45 a.m. Dec. 14 when he crossed into oncoming traffic and struck a 2013 Honda Civic driven by David Martinez, 71.
Martinez, Barerra, and his wife, Marilis Victoria Barrera, 23, were pronounced dead at the scene.
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Covelli said the wreck remains under investigation.
Martinez was on his way to a medical appointment, Covelli said, and it remained unclear where the Barerras had been that evening.
Jose Barerra has been posthumously advanced to hospital corpsman 2nd class, said Julie Ewart, a spokeswoman for the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center.
Barerra, who along with his wife was from nearby Waukegan, Illinois, was assigned to the center’s Family Practice Clinic.
Barrera graduated from boot camp in 2014 and had been assigned to the Chicago-area since 2015, Jayna M. Legg, a spokeswoman for the health care center told Navy Times.
“HM3 Barrera was well-known to clinical staff at Lovell FHCC and will be sorely missed,” Legg said in an email.
Visitation is scheduled from 5-9 p.m. Dec. 19 at Paris Banquet Hall, 1492 Lewis Avenue in North Chicago, with a funeral mass set for 10 a.m. the next morning at Most Blessed Trinity Parish, 450 Keller Avenue in Waukegan.
Internment will follow directly after.
Courtney Mabeus-Brown is the senior reporter at Air Force Times. She is an award-winning journalist who previously covered the military for Navy Times and The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va., where she first set foot on an aircraft carrier. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy and more.
