2 pedestrians killed in San Francisco have been a mom and daughter visiting for a marriage

The two women killed after a taxi plowed into a sidewalk near Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on Sunday were a mother and daughter visiting from Florida, according to friends and family members.

Mary Henderson, 72, and her 31 year-old daughter, Willa Henderson, traveled to San Francisco for a friend’s wedding when the taxi struck them at Third and Mission streets shortly after 4:30 pm Sunday afternoon. Henderson’s husband, Wayne Henderson, was seriously injured in the crash and is currently in intensive care at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, a close friend said.

“I just can’t wrap my head around this,” Mary Henderson’s brother, Kenneth Sickinger, told The Chronicle through sobs on Tuesday morning. He had last spoken to his sister on Sunday as she was heading out for a walk in downtown San Francisco before the family went out to dinner.

The Hendersons traveled from their home in Vero Beach, a small coastal town in Florida, to attend a wedding in the Napa Valley, Sickinger said.

They were standing near the Grove at Yerba Buena Center when the driver of a northbound Mercedes on Third Street attempted a right hand turn from the center lane, nearly crashing into a taxi that was cruising in the red lane for buses and cabs, also headed north , police and officials at San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency said.

In an email to the pedestrian safety group Walk SF that was reviewed by The Chronicle, an SFMTA engineer said the taxi veered onto the northeast corner of the sidewalk, attempting to avoid a side swipe. Though the taxi driver managed to avoid eight pedestrians, he struck three, killing the two women.

Choking back tears, Sickinger described how his mother immigrated with her parents from Germany as an infant, right after World War II.

Her parents met and fell in love in Berlin and started a family as refugees, Sickinger said. Mary Henderson was about six months old when they caught a boat to New York, eventually moving to Westwood, New Jersey to raise their children.

A hard-working, ambitious woman, Mary Henderson went to dental school and wound up studying business at Harvard University, her brother said. Wayne Henderson works as attorney.

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan