Mom Gave Birth to Family’s 1st Girl in Over a Decade. They Died in Crash Just Before Daughter’s 2nd Birthday

A 29-year-old California mother and her 1-year-old daughter were killed in a multi-vehicle crash just two weeks before the little girl’s second birthday.

Ivana Balistreri and her daughter, Lilliana, were identified by relatives as the victims of a four-vehicle collision on northbound Highway 87 in San Jose, which occurred shortly before 11 a.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 2.

Ivana’s fiancé, Zach Martins — who sustained minor injuries but survived — had been driving her to the barbershop where she worked, her oldest sisters, Francesca Alexander and Rosie Balistreri, say.

According to Francesca, authorities told the family that the force of the impact between the four vehicles — two Teslas, a Lexus and a Toyota Sienna — caused the Teslas to catch fire and engulf the Lexus that Ivana, Lilliana and Zach were in, making it impossible for him to get them out.

The cause of the crash remains under investigation, but the California Highway Patrol has said that alcohol and drugs are not believed to be factors.

“Part of what is making this even more difficult is that we really have no answers as to what happened that took my sister and my niece from us,” Francesca says.

“It’s been the worst thing that I could imagine us going through as a family,” she adds.

Francesca says their mother, 60-year-old Benedetta Balistreri, received a text alert on Dec. 2 informing her that Ivana had been in a crash.

Their father, Aurelio, 63, drove to the scene and tried to get as close as possible but was stopped by police, who told him to go to the hospital where crash victims were being taken.

After picking up Benedetta, the parents went to the hospital, where Zach told them that Ivana and Lilliana had died.

Ivana grew up in a close-knit Italian family.

Her parents and brother, Gaetano, were born in Sicily, while Francesca, Rosie and Ivana — the youngest — were born in San Jose.

“She always pushed me to be a better version of myself,” says Rosie, 37, who lives with depression. “She would always call me and make sure I was okay and try to get me out of bed to go on walks with her.”

Their first cousin, 30-year-old Ilenia Balistreri, says she and Ivana were as close as sisters — and that Ivana, who was the first among their siblings and cousins to have a daughter in 18 years, helped guide her through her own pregnancy.

“I would not have been able to make it through pregnancy and postpartum without her,” says Ilenia, who also later welcomed a baby girl. “I would have loved Lilly to grow up with my daughter just like I did with Ivana, but life’s not fair.”

Lilliana was the light of the family. “We all gravitated towards her,” Francesca says. “She was a very happy baby.”

Although Ivana had “always been beautiful,” Francesca says she blossomed even more after Lilliana’s birth. Francesca, who lives about 100 miles away in Lodi and is now a mother of twin daughters herself, watched her younger sister step fully into motherhood with joy and confidence.

Ivana was also deeply creative — she loved to paint and make art, though she shared that side of herself mostly with those closest to her — and she was proud of having recently mastered cooking, largely through trial and error, Francesca says.

Rosie, a chef, says she will miss the photos Ivana would text her of the meals she cooked, along with messages asking what she thought of them.

Ivana and Zach, who were engaged but had not yet set a wedding date, had been together for more than three years after meeting on a dating app, Francesca says.

Thinking back to the first time she met Zach, Francesca recalls that Ivana asked to bring him as her date to their brother’s wedding in Florida, even though they had only been dating for about a month.

“We were all like, ‘Girl, it’s only been a month — you’re going to bring this guy around your big Italian family, they’re super loud,’ ” Francesca remembers. But Ivana didn’t hesitate.

“I’m glad she did, because Zach fell into our family right away,” Francesca says. “It felt like they had been together for years instead of that one month.”

The family has launched a GoFundMe that has raised more than $100,000 as of Tuesday, Dec. 9. They hope that by sharing their story publicly, anyone with information about the crash — including potential video footage — will come forward.