Miguel Luna, victim of Key Bridge collapse, was a kindhearted family man from El Salvador

Christine Condon, Cassidy Jensen, Baltimore Sun
·5 min read
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Working on the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Dundalk one weekend a few years ago, construction worker Miguel Luna took it upon himself to bring lunch to his crewmates.

The crew was about 20 people, but Luna brought tacos, pupusas and even hot soup for everyone from his wife’s food truck, said Bobby Knutson Jr., who was also on that crew from Brawner Builders.

Now, Luna is among the six construction workers from Brawner Builders who are presumed dead after that very same bridge collapsed Tuesday, struck by a massive cargo ship that lost power in the Patapsco River in the middle of the night. Rescue workers recovered two of their bodies Wednesday, inside a truck submerged in the water: 35-year-old Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, of Baltimore, and 26-year-old Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, of Dundalk.

Friends described Luna, an immigrant from El Salvador who was in the United States for close to two decades, as a joyful father and grandfather who lived in Glen Burnie and worked as a welder. Luna had three children, according to CASA, a national nonprofit assisting immigrants of which Luna was a member.

Glen Burnie resident Ratnewswar Roychowdhury said he’s known Luna and his wife, Maria del Carmen, for over three years as a customer of the family’s pink and white food truck, Pupuseria Y Antojitos Carmencita Luna. Luna was 49, Roychowdhury said.

Although the two men struggled to communicate across a language barrier, they forged a connection through food. Luna introduced him to Salvadoran favorites, and Roychowdhury answered his questions about Indian spices.

“He’s not from my country. He’s not from my religion. But we had special bonding through food,” Roychowdhury said in an interview in the Glen Burnie parking lot where the food truck is parked. Luna often cooked alongside his wife inside the food truck when he wasn’t working construction shifts.

Luna had shown Roychowdhury photos of himself in military uniform in El Salvador.

Knutson, a construction worker from Northern Virginia who worked at Brawner for about five years, described Luna as a “family man.” One of Luna’s final posts on Facebook was a video, showing a gender reveal for his grandchild-to-be, Knutson said.

Knutson remembered Luna seemed to always be smiling at work, and loved cracking jokes with his crewmates. Knutson said he and other workers from Brawner worked on the Key Bridge many times.

If Knutson fell asleep in the work truck during one of their breaks, Luna would snap a photo, and playfully vow to send it to their bosses. Knutson, a self-proclaimed “big eater,” remembered that Luna jokingly nicknamed him “Pig.”

Sometimes, there was a bit of a language barrier between Knutson and the Spanish speakers on the crew, but they bonded nevertheless, he said. Their playful banter and laughter transcended language, Knutson said.

“I probably spent more time with a lot of those guys than I did my own family. And that’s what it kind of started to feel like, was a family.”

Luna was born in the Salvadoran city of California, located in the department of Usulután in the southeast of El Salvador, said Alvaro Lizama, a friend.

Lizama, who is also from Usultán, said he met Luna in the early 2000s when they were in their 20s. Lizama was playing for a professional soccer team in his hometown of Berlín, called Once Berlines.

Luna was brought onto the team from outside of Berlín because he was a gifted defenseman, said Lizama, who played goalie. Luna was a quiet and humble team member who shined on defense, despite his short stature.

Since each of them moved to different parts of the United States, they weren’t able to see each other in person, Lizama said, but they kept in touch through Facebook.

“I was very shocked,” he said in Spanish. “I could never have imagined that a friend of mine would be one of those who disappeared in the accident.”

Elvis Javier Zaldivar, previously lived in Dundalk and met Luna working in welding and pipe fitting from 2018 to 2021.

“When I realized that it was that bridge, my first thought was Miguel because he had spoken about working there,” Zaldivar said in Spanish over the phone from Honduras.

“He was a really good friend to me. He was a stand-up guy. He didn’t drink. He was a hard worker and a good dad, always worried about his family and his kids,” Zaldivar said in Spanish.

Months ago, Miguel Luna wanted to build a fence around the one-story brick home in Glen Burnie he had recently bought with his wife, but he didn’t want to encroach on his next-door neighbor Kim Luna’s property. Because he struggled to communicate in English, he enlisted translation help from a bilingual neighbor across the street, Pedro Marin Luna.

That’s when all three Lunas, who are unrelated, learned they shared the same name. Kim even insisted the men take out their driver’s licenses to prove it.

“It was almost like we had a cohesion — the three of us,” Pedro said Wednesday in an interview on their street.

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Now, Pedro and Kim are mourning the kind man who always seemed to be working, whether as a construction worker, making food to sell on his wife’s food truck or making improvements to his house. Still, he found time to give Kim a ride to the store and repair her roommate’s lawnmower without being asked.

Kim Luna would wave to him as he repaired his roof, or stood on a ladder to swing a piñata for a children’s birthday party.

“They were providing for our state,” Pedro Luna said. “While they were just fixing potholes, they were making the state better.”

Baltimore Sun reporter Dillon Mullan contributed to this article.