See the update at the bottom of the next page on Kourosh Keshmiri drawing a murder charge from the district attorney.
ORIGINAL POST, DEC. 30, 9:24 A.M.: We are–sadly–used to reading about drunken drivers killing other drivers or pedestrians, but slaying via vehicle a man sleeping in his bedroom is very rare indeed.
But that's what Kourosh Keshmiri is accused of doing to Ken Jackson, who died early Sunday after a Cadillac sedan smashed into his Mission Viejo home. The 27-year-old driver was drunk, driving on a license suspended due to DUI and had a previous DUI conviction, according to authorities.
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Deputies were dispatched around 3 a.m. Sunday to the 26000 block of Pacato Drive, where a late-model, maroon Caddy “actually penetrated the house,” Orange County Sheriff's Lt. Jerry Carlson told City News Service.
Keshmiri is alleged to have lost control of the car before it jumped the curb and vaulted into the home. Its rear tires were still in the air when rescuers arrived, and sheriff's Lt. Jeff Hallock says in a statement to the Weekly this morning that extracting the car from the home with a tow truck was delayed because a natural-gas line had been severed, adding SoCal Edison Gas Co. secured the line.
The man sleeping in the front bedroom, identified by friends as motorcycle enthusiast Ken Jackson, was killed at the scene while another male in the home was unharmed. Keshmiri and another man in the car suffered minor injuries but they did not require hospitalization.
Keshmiri was booked for felony drunken driving with a prior conviction and may face additional charges following the completion of the investigation, Hallock said. The sheriff's spokesman indicated Keshmiri has a prior misdemeanor drunken driving conviction in August 2010 and an arrest from this past June, when his driver's license was suspended pending the outcome of the case.
UPDATE, DEC. 30, 4:30 P.M.: The Orange County District Attorney's office (OCDA) announced this afternoon that a murder count has been filed against Kourosh Keshmiri.
Currently held on $1 million bail, the 27-year-old Mission Viejo resident could be sent to state prison for 15 years to life with a conviction, according to the OCDA. He is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday.
Keshmiri will actually be spending a lot of time in courts as he is charged in a separate case from June 2013 with one misdemeanor count each of driving under the influence (DUI) of alcohol with a prior, driving with a blood alcohol level of .08 percent or more with a prior, and sentencing enhancements and allegations for having a blood alcohol over .15 percent and having a prior DUI conviction from 2010, states the OCDA, adding he faces a pre-trial hearing Jan. 23 in Newport Beach.
According to the arraignment statement: “At approximately 4:00 a.m. on Dec. 29, 2013, Keshmiri is accused of speeding over 50 mph in a 25 mph residential neighborhood in Mission Viejo. He is accused of losing control of his car and crashing into a home, driving into the front bedroom where 60-year-old victim Kenneth Jackson was sleeping in his bed.
“When Orange County Sheriff's Department (OCSD) deputies arrived, the defendant is accused of displaying objective signs of intoxication and performed poorly on a field sobriety test.
“The victim died as a result of his injuries.”
The OCDA claims that from Keshmiri's prior DUI case from 2010, he “was advised at the time of his conviction that he could be charged with murder if he killed another person while driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.”
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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.