Third grader Julianna Marie Villa Hopkins was walking three blocks from her apartment complex to Kynoch Elementary School in Marysville, California with her younger sister, Isabella. Walking a bicycle across a 4 way intersection, she was struck by an SUV that was turning and which ran over Julianna when she knelt down to pick up her fallen bike. The driver claims she never saw Julianna, Isabella or the bicycle. Julianna was pronounced dead less than an hour after the collision. It was two days before her 10th birthday.
Julianna enjoyed many things: reading, drawing, school, animals, bracelets, playing with her siblings, dancing and singing. When she grew up, she wanted to be an artist and save endangered animals.
Julianna is survived by her mother, Mandy Hopkins, her brother, Jared Johnson and her sister, Isabella Hopkins.
“She was very thoughtful and talented. I just can’t believe she died,” said friend Tyler Klingenfuss, who couldn’t hold back tears. Another relative said she was “beautiful, beautiful to the heart” while another called a “very spunky little girl.”
“Julianna is an angel of a little girl. Always in happy spirit, she’s meek, she’s just a beautiful baby girl,” her grandmother Frances Ostahowksi said at a memorial the night of her passing. “She got to try on her birthday clothes and dance in the living room, and it was a good moment for all of us,” she said.
Visit Julianna’s memorial page on Facebook.
