Loved ones are devastated after a DUI driver violently crashed into a UPS truck, killing two people in South Los Angeles.
A vigil was held Friday evening in memory of the two victims.
The fatal crash occurred March 28 near Arlington Avenue and 29th Street in the Jefferson Park neighborhood just before noon.
The driver of a black BMW sedan was traveling at a high rate of speed and struck the rear of a parked UPS truck. The violent impact propelled the sedan into the air before it collided with several oncoming cars and cars parked on the street.
A woman sitting in the front passenger seat and a man sitting in the rear seat were both ejected from the BMW. They were pronounced dead at the scene.
The suspect driver attempted to flee after the crash, but was captured by good Samaritans who had witnessed the collision.
“I said, ‘Hey man, where are you going? You just killed people!’ », remembers Carmichael Guillemet, one of the good Samaritans. “He said, ‘Chill,’ but I said, ‘Hey man, you just killed that girl,’ and he said, ‘What girl?’ and I was completely out of it. And I said, ‘How could you run away at this moment?’
Guillemet was cooking for him and his wife when we heard the accident happen in front of his house.
“I heard a big boom,” he remembers. “It sounded like a grenade, a very loud explosion.”
He immediately went outside to find a horrific scene. A large quantity of automobile debris was scattered on the roadway and the suspect driver attempted to flee.
“When he got out of the car, he kind of started tripping and he tripped in a jog and then started running,” Guillemet said. “After what I had seen, I just couldn’t allow him to get away with that.”
Guillemet and a group of neighbors chased the suspect for several blocks and monitored him until authorities arrived and took him into custody. He was transported to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
The suspect’s girlfriend, Luzelena Soria-Rosales, 18, who was sitting in the front seat, died instantly after being ejected from the car.
The suspect’s friend who was sitting in the back seat, Oscar Santos Farela, was found dead in the vehicle.
Police said the suspect was driving under the influence at the time of the crash.
Footage of the aftermath showed how violent the impact was, with the roof of the BMW almost completely torn off the vehicle’s chassis. A crater-sized dent was left in the back of the UPS truck. Several other cars hit during the collision also suffered heavy damage.
“(The suspect) had no responsibility,” said retired Sgt. José Suarez, the victims’ friend. “He had no loyalty to his friend, to the girl sitting next to him. I don’t know what he was thinking.
Suarez grew up with Farela and said he was speaking to him on the phone just before the fatal crash. He said Farela’s final moments seemed chaotic.
“Something like, ‘Slow down, calm down, you’re going too fast,’” Suarez recalled. “It sucks because deep down you knew his life was in danger.”
Suarez said Farela’s mother had just passed away three months ago and so her family was overwhelmed with grief at the moment.
The identity of the suspect has not been released as police continue their investigation into the deadly incident. Authorities are combing through surveillance footage collected from nearby homes as the suspect could be charged with murder.
News Source : ktla.com
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