Newport Beach : Woman Charged in Hit-and-Run Death

A Newport Beach woman was arrested Friday and booked on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter in connection with last Sunday’s hit-and-run death of a teen-age jogger, police said.

Susan Norman Long, 34, of Newport Beach was arrested at about noon as she was leaving her home, Newport Beach police spokesman Trent Harris said. Long was booked, then taken to Orange County Jail, where bail was set at $25,000, Harris said.

Claude R. Hubert Jr., 15, of Costa Mesa was struck as he was jogging in the dark along the 2000 block of Irvine Avenue with his 17-year-old sister. He died three days later.

Two city sanitation workers had noticed a damaged auto on Monday in the carport area of Long’s 46th Street residence and later reported the information to police, Harris said. A follow-up investigation led police to a Santa Ana body shop where the car, a 1977 four-door Cadillac, was being repaired, he said.

Undisclosed evidence recovered from the vehicle by Orange County sheriff’s technicians indicated that the car was the same one that struck Hubert, Harris said.

“Other information showed that the suspect, Long, the (car’s) registered owner, was driving it at the time,” Harris said.

Police still plan to set up a booth in the vicinity of the hit-and-run accident on Sunday from 5 to 8 p.m. in hopes of finding people who may have witnessed the accident, Harris said.