GUT-WRENCHING

Baby’s Baptism Becomes Funeral for 11 Killed in Mexico Church Collapse

Three-month-old girl and her mom among those killed when church crumbled in quake.

A baby’s Baptism in the Mexican town of Atzala turned into a funeral Wednesday for 11 people killed a day earlier when the church collapsed during a christening ceremony. Three-month-old Elideth Torres de Leon was killed along with her 8-year-old sister, Maria, and the girls’ mother, Manuela de Leon Garcia, when the Santiago the Apostle Catholic Church crumbled Tuesday following a 7.1-magnitude earthquake. Eight other people who were at the church were also laid to rest Wednesday, as friends and family gathered around 11 closed coffins to say their final farewells. “I am in profound pain. I am shattered,” Graciano Villanueva Perez, who lost six relatives in the church collapse, told the Los Angeles Times.