CONCORD — Desma Oakes learned to ride a motorcycle after overcoming several tragedies in life.
Now, her family is coming to terms with her death in a motorcycle crash.
“It’s a huge loss,” her mother Debra Cook said. “Really hard to describe. We are just trying to take everything one day at a time.”
Oakes, 42, of Concord and who grew up in Norwich, was one of seven people killed in Randolph, N.H., on Friday when a pickup truck hauling a trailer crashed into a group of bikers on U.S. Route 2. They were all members of the biker group JarHeads Motorcycle Club, a group for Marines and their spouses.
Oakes was riding on a bike with her boyfriend, Aaron Perry, of Farmington, N.H. Perry also was killed.
Law enforcement said the crash was one of the largest fatality counts from a road crash the state has ever seen.
The driver of the pickup, Volodymyr Zhukovskyy, 23, was arrested Monday at his home in West Springfield, Mass., by the Massachusetts State Police Fugitive Apprehension Unit for his role in the fatal crash. He was taken into custody on a fugitive from justice charge based on a New Hampshire warrant, charging him with seven counts of negligent homicide.
He was arraigned Monday afternoon in Massachusetts and will be extradited to New Hampshire.
Oakes’s death comes as her family is still reeling from two other major losses in the last 10 years.
Oakes lost her 4-year-old son to lung cancer in 2009 and her husband to the same disease three years later.
Despite the difficulties she had faced, Oakes had a positive outlook on life, said her mother, Debra Cook. She focused on giving to others and spent time volunteering for charities that helped children diagnosed with cancer.
“She was someone who just loved life in general,” Cook said. “She was outgoing, she was giving. She was a hard worker.”
Cook said things were going well for Oakes lately: Her older son Colby had just graduated high school, and she had been working on her health. She had lost 125 pounds in the last year, her mother said.
She also just had started riding motorcycles nine months ago with her new boyfriend, Aaron Perry. Cook said Oakes was close with her family.
“Even though she lived so far away, she would call often and we would visit every month, if not more,” she said.
Cook said Oakes worked in the field of human relations.
Oakes’ name was announced with the names of the other six motorcyclists killed in the crash at a news conference at the state Incident Planning and Operations Center in Concord on Sunday.
Her photo was displayed on a screen projector, smiling for a portrait in a white blouse with an ornate black necklace in front of a brown background.
Other motorcycle riders killed in the collision were identified as Perry, 45; Albert Mazza, 59, of Lee, N.H.; and Michael Ferazzi, 62, of Contoocook, N.H.; Daniel Pereira, 58, of Riverside, R.I.; and a couple, Jo-Ann and Edward Corr, both 58, of Lakeville, Mass. Young said the Corrs were riding on the same motorcycle at the time of the crash.
Two additional motorcyclists were injured during the crash: Joshua Morin, 45, of Dalton, Mass., who is stable at Maine Medical Center, and Steven Lewis, 58, of Brimfield, Mass., who has since been released from an area hospital, Young said.