Through the long afternoon yesterday, family, friends and neighbors streamed into the small yellow Arlington bungalow where 9-year-old Lilibeth Gomez had lived with her parents, her four sisters and her brother.
Alex Gomez, 43, Lilibeth's uncle, said he was working at Bed, Bath & Beyond when his wife called to tell him about the school-bus crash in which the girl was killed on her way to Hoffman-Boston Elementary School that morning.
"When I first heard, I wasn't thinking it was someone in my family," he said, adding that it is hard to imagine coming to his brother's house now, knowing that the little girl who called him "Uncle Daddy" won't be there to greet him.
"We really are heartbroken," he said. "She was a gorgeous girl. She would run up to me and hug me."
Lilibeth's brother, Jorge Gomez, 15, recalled playing soccer with her on the front lawn -- their ball lay under a budding azalea -- and taking her to a nearby park to play basketball. "She was a really cool sister," he said. "She liked sports and everything."
Jorge said that Lilibeth, a third-grader and the second youngest in the family, liked the color blue, chicken McNuggets and playing make-believe with dolls nearly as big as she was. "She was eating breakfast the last time I saw her," he said. "I was getting ready for school, and she was like, 'Goodbye.' "
Jorge, who attends Wakefield High School, said police came to get him out of class yesterday and took him home.
Lilibeth's father, Jorge, works in a restaurant and her mother as a nanny, according to family friend Christina Portuondo. They were married in El Salvador and came to the United States in the mid-1980s.
Portuondo said a Mass for Lilibeth is scheduled for Friday at a church in the District.
