Boy Hurt in Crash Like One Fatal to Brother

Just one month after his brother died when he was thrown from a car in a tragic accident, a Mission Viejo youth remains in a coma Tuesday, the victim of a similar crash on Sunday.

Bret Besse, 15, and the driver of a 1981 Volkswagen convertible were both thrown from the car as it struck a highway embankment and flipped over at least once shortly after midnight Sunday, a California Highway Patrol officer said.

Besse suffered a broken ankle, facial and skull fractures, CHP Officer Ken Daily said. He remained comatose in critical condition Tuesday, a spokeswoman for Mission Community Hospital in Mission Viejo said.

The 17-year-old driver, whose name was withheld because of age, was taken to Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Anaheim where he could be treated for head cuts, Daily said.

A hospital spokeswoman said Tuesday the driver was in stable condition.

The driver was arrested on suspicion of felony drunk driving, but results of a blood alcohol test are not complete, Daily said.

Judge Had Suspended License

The driver did not have a valid license because of a drunk-driving conviction in December, when a Juvenile Court judge suspended the youth’s license until he was 21, Daily said. The Volkswagen was a borrowed car, he said.

Last month, David Michael Besse, Bret’s older brother by five years, died in a similar accident.

Like Bret, David Besse was a passenger in a car driven by a friend and he was thrown from the car in an accident that occurred shortly after midnight. Neither youth was wearing a seat belt, Daily said.

Daily said both the Volkswagen driver and Bret Besse “would have come out of the accident without a scratch” on Sunday if they had been wearing seat belts.

The Volkswagen was northbound on Interstate 5 when it exited at Pacific Coast Highway at 70 m.p.h., Daily said. The vehicle struck the curved embankment of the highway off-ramp about 12:10 a.m., he said.

In the earlier accident, David Michael Besse sustained fatal head injuries about 1 a.m. July 15 when he was ejected from a car and then trapped beneath it in the yard of a Mission Viejo elementary school, Daily said. The four-wheel-drive vehicle reportedly had been “spinning doughnuts”--gouging circles into the damp grass of the school grounds--when the driver lost control.