THE estranged wife of the US limousine driver who was behind the wheel when a fire in the vehicle killed five women celebrating the wedding of a Filipino nurse says he was arguing with her on the phone moments before the blaze.
Rachel "Raquel" Hernandez-Brown has told the San Jose Mercury News that during their shouting match Orville Brown turned up the music in the limo so his passengers couldn't hear the tense conversation.
"The music was really loud. And I kept yelling, 'I can't hear you. Turn it down,"' Hernandez-Brown told the paper on Sunday. "I said, 'You're not paying attention.' You know, like, get off the phone. Stop calling me."
One of the nine nurses in the vehicle said she banged on the partition to warn the driver that the back of the limo was filling with smoke. Brown told authorities that he initially misunderstood the warning as a request to smoke a cigarette and kept driving.
Hernandez-Brown, in her first comments about the May 4 fire, said Brown called moments after getting out of the limo to tell her it was ablaze.
The couple have four children and separated about a month before the fire on the San Mateo Bridge. Hernandez-Brown called police hours before the blaze to report that Brown had kicked and dented her car during an argument. He had left the scene before police arrived.
The newspaper reported that the California Highway Patrol was expected to announce the cause of the fire soon, and investigators had focused on friction from the drive shaft.
The nine nurses had hired the 1999 Lincoln Town Car to celebrate the recent wedding of Neriza Fojas, one of the five women who died.
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