1 Killed, 2 Hurt as Car Plunges off Interstate 5 at 100 M.P.H.

A car speeding at an estimated 100 miles per hour spun out of control on Interstate 5 in San Juan Capistrano about 2 p.m. Sunday and plunged over a bridge, killing one San Diego man and seriously injuring two others in the vehicle.

The victim, a 28-year-old man whose parents live in Mexico, was not identified pending notification of his family. The California Highway Patrol said the man was crushed to death in the car.

The crash impact ejected the other two men through the car’s windshield, said CHP Officer Steve Ussher, who was at the scene. The two survivors were identified as Ramon Pena, 24, of San Diego and Juan Fajardo, 18, of La Jolla. Both were taken to Mission Community Hospital in Mission Viejo, where they were reported in serious condition late Sunday night.

Ussher said it could not be immediately determined who was driving the car.

The accident occurred in the southbound lane of I-5, on the bridge over San Juan Creek.

Ussher said the car, a Cadillac of undetermined year, was driving southbound, toward San Diego, and was veering “in and out of traffic at a high rate of speed. . . . Witnesses said the car was going 80 to 100 miles per hour.”

The Cadillac passed another vehicle and then spun out of control, striking the center divider twice, Ussher said. The vehicle hit a guard rail, sailed over it and “became airborne, rolling several times in the air,” Ussher said.

The car fell onto a high, concrete support wall next to the bridge. The momentum of the fall caused the vehicle to slide about 40 feet along the elevated wall. The impact sent the car’s engine hurtling another 30 feet. Pena and Fajardo were ejected, but the fatally injured man remained trapped inside the badly crushed car.

Officers said it took several hours to extricate the man from the car because the gasoline tank was leaking and there was fear that a spark from even the slightest brush of metal upon metal might ignite the crushed vehicle.

Southbound traffic on I-5 was backed up as far as La Paz Road in Mission Viejo, said CHP dispatchers. They said that two of the southbound lanes remained completely blocked for about four hours at the bridge.