Hit-Run Kills Scooter Rider; Three Die in Other Crashes

Four people died in three Orange County traffic accidents within a four-hour span Friday night and early Saturday morning, law enforcement officials reported.

After one of the incidents, a man was arrested on suspicion of felony hit-and-run driving.

The first accident occurred at 10:30 p.m. Friday when the driver of a late-model sedan traveling west on the 91 Freeway lost control near Imperial Highway in Anaheim Hills. The car skidded sideways into the center divider and flipped over, ejecting both men. A California Highway Patrol spokesman said the men, identified as Alfredo Cornejo Parra, 31, and Pablo Wancho-Hurtado, 34, both of Mexicali, Mexico, died instantly.

The spokesman said the car had been traveling at 80 to 90 m.p.h. He said an investigation had not determined which man was the driver.

Motorcyclist Dies

Almost an hour later, Michael David Brown, 21, a Marine stationed at Camp Pendleton, crashed his motorcycle into the back of a legally parked car on Old Coast Highway about half a mile north of Capistrano Beach, the CHP reported. Brown died instantly. A spokesman for the coroner’s office said that Brown, who was not wearing a helmet, died of massive head injuries.

The fourth fatality was a hit-and-run accident in Anaheim at 2:24 a.m. in which Reed Guthrie, 21, of Anaheim, was struck from behind by a car as he rode his motor scooter, police said.

Anaheim Police Sgt. Michael Webb said Wasef Salim was subsequently arrested on suspicion of felony hit-and-run and felony driving while intoxicated and was booked into the Anaheim City Jail.

Webb said that Salim, who was driving a 1974 Pontiac Lemans, slammed into the back of Guthrie’s motor scooter as Guthrie was traveling north on Walnut Street near Cerritos Drive. The coroner’s office said Guthrie died of head injuries minutes after the accident.

The police spokesman said Salim fled the scene but later returned to mingle with a crowd observing police officers and paramedics attend to Guthrie.

“He was standing in the crowd of onlookers watching the police officers,” Webb said. He was arrested there without incident.