Heartbroken mum Angelina Kauffman reveals what her life is really like after two of her kids died in an alleged hit and run

Angelina Kauffman lost her son and daughter in an alleged hit-and-run. Now, after her unimaginable loss, she’s calling for change. See why and watch the video.

Exclusive: Angelina Kauffman’s house is like a shrine to her children, Alina and Ernesto, who were allegedly hit by a stolen car and left for dead on the side of the road.

Her surviving daughter sleeps in Ernesto’s old room, on a mattress surrounded with framed poster-size portraits of her siblings resting on the sheets. White crucifixes from the cemetery are perched by the window.

She would like to move out of the house in Heckenberg, in Sydney’s southwest. She says it has bad vibes, but being a single mum with a workplace injury, she’s at the mercy of public housing. Lack of availability means she has to stay there, just a few hundred metres from where her children died.

“My other daughter sleeps in her brother’s room and plays his PC,” she said in her first extended interview.

Watch the interview in the video above.

Angelina Kauffman is pictured in her son Ernesto’s bedroom, where her daughter sleeps surrounded with photos of her siblings. Crosses used at the grave site also rest on the bed. Picture: Jeff Darmanin

“She doesn’t leave the house because they died right outside – I tell her she should go out with her friends but she doesn’t want to, so we need to change, we need to move.”

Alina, 24, had gone to pick up her brother Ernesto, 15, from work at Kmart in Liverpool at about 9pm on September 1, 2023. Angelina was going to do it, but Alina insisted.

At 9.14pm, Alina called her mother, saying “Mum, Mum, I can’t find my brother!”.

Angelina started to panic, asking “what, where’s your brother?” before she heard them both laughing on the other end of the phone.

She laughed and told them: “You guys are going to give me a heart attack, drive safe and I’ll see you when you get home. I love you.”

Five minutes later, Alina was driving the family’s Toyota Echo around a corner at Sadleir Ave when a high-performance Mercedes allegedly veered onto the wrong side of the road at 100km/h and crashed into them.

Alina Kauffman died alongside her brother, Ernesto, in an alleged hit and run in September 2023. Picture: Supplied

Angelina Kauffman’s son Ernesto, 15, died in alleged hit and run in September 2023. Picture: Supplied

Alina Kauffman, 24, and her brother Ernesto Salazar, 15, are pictured leaving Kmart on September 1, 2023. They died about 20 minutes later. Picture: Supplied

The Mercedes was driven by Johnson Kokozian, 21, whose licence had been disqualified. He allegedly fled the scene, leaving Alina and Ernesto to die in the crumpled Toyota. Kokozian was charged with a range of offences relating to the crash and is now on remand in prison.

His alleged passengers and father have also been charged over their alleged attempt to conceal the crime.

Angelina struggles with the fact that her kids were allegedly hit by someone who shouldn’t have been driving. She also struggles with the thought that things might have been different if she insisted on picking Ernesto up from work that day.

Angelina Kauffman talks about losing her children Alina and Ernesto in a car crash, only minutes from their home in Heckenberg. Picture Jeff Darmanin

And she struggles knowing her children died in an alleged hit and run.

Alina’s spine was severed in several places, and the force pushed half Ernesto’s body into the back seat of the car. Angelina had thought they both died on impact, but the corner said Ernesto survived for 39 minutes.

It was neighbours who sounded the alarm. Within the five minutes it took paramedics to arrive, someone went to the scene and filmed the siblings dying in the car. That footage was then shared around their school, eventually landing in their 18-year-old sister’s inbox.

Angelina Kauffman is pictured standing at two memorial benches installed at the crash site by the local council. They each have a plaque with Ernesto and Alina’s name. Picture Jeff Darmanin

Angelina Kauffman is pictured with her daughter, Alina (right). Picture: Supplied

“Someone sent it to her and she opened it without knowing what it was, and she screamed and ran upstairs and sobbed, “Mum, it’s my brother … my brother and my sister’,” Angelina said.

After that, she started going to the crash site and screaming at the top of her lungs, “whoever

recorded my kids, god look after you”.

Angelina moved to Sydney in 2007 because she saw gang activity and gun violence where she grew up, in San Diego.

She recalled being friends with a boy at school, who was bullied but was always nice to her. A few years after they finished junior high, he went on a gun rampage at one of the schools.

“And I’m looking at the news thinking, oh my god I don’t want my kids to go through this, so I moved to Australia,” she said.

“A car is like a gun, it can be used as a weapon.”

Alina and Ernesto died at an alleged hit and run near their home in Heckenberg. Picture: TNV

Alina and Ernesto died in a fatal crash on Sadlier Avenue in Heckenberg in September 2023. Picture: Julian Andrews

After the crash, she spent her days walking around shopping centres and train stations, collecting signatures for her petition to change the legislation to increase penalties for serious road crimes – she couldn’t believe the maximum sentence for aggravated driving occasioning death was 14 years, while the maximum sentence for covering up a crime was 20 years.

She reached her target of 20,000 signatures. On the day she addressed NSW parliament, she carried the keys to Alina and Ernesto’s coffins – slamming them down on the bench to ensure she had the attention of everyone in the chamber.

“Everyone was crying by the end,” she said.

“But I had to – I have to do this for my kids, they have to know that I’ll fight for them and I will never give up.”

Originally published as Heartbroken mum Angelina Kauffman reveals what her life is really like after two of her kids died in an alleged hit and run