It's bad enough to be a cop rolling up to a DUI crash but being an active participant in one? A cop, sheriff's deputy and highway patrolman know that feeling.
A 2000 Honda Accord was allegedly speeding on the 5 freeway just south of the 22 freeway around 1:30 a.m. Sunday when a California Highway Patrol officer tried unsuccessfully to pull over the driver, according to CHP Officer Florentino Olivera. That led to a chase that lasted a few minutes before the Accord slammed into a Toyota Camry near the Chapman Avenue off-ramp and careened into a utility pole and concrete wall in Garden Grove, Olivera said.
The Honda exploded into flames, and a CHP sergeant and Garden Grove Police officer managed to use a fire extinguisher and save the driver and two of his passengers, Olivera said. But the flames got too hot to rescue a third passenger. Addison Villa, 21, of Santa Ana was pronounced dead at the scene, according to the county coroner.
Passengers Adilene Chavira, 19, and Saul Chavira, 22, both of Santa Ana, were hospitalized with injuries. Driver Dagoberto Orepeza, 29, of Santa Ana, was taken to Long Beach Memorial Hospital, where he was kept under guard. That's because Orepeza was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving and felony evading, Olivera said.
Four early mornings before, on Thursday, a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department K-9 SUV was smacked by a sedan at the intersection of Slater Avenue and Newland Street in Huntington Beach, knocking out the deputy behind the wheel, according to Roxi Fyad of the Orange County
District Attorney's office. She did not know whether the dog was injured.
The driver of the sedan, William Long Thai Nguyen, 29, of Corona, is accused of consuming alcohol and methamphetamine before the 4:30 a.m.-ish crash. He pleaded not guilty at the West Justice Center in Westminster to a felony count of driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs causing bodily injury with a prior conviction, a misdemeanor count of driving without a valid license, an infraction of possessing marijuana while driving and a sentencing enhancement for inflicting great bodily injury, Fyad said.
Nguyen, who was convicted of misdemeanor DUI in 2013 in Orange County, faces up to six years in prison and six months in jail if he is found guilty, Fyad said. He's due at a pretrial hearing on Dec. 15.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.