Crash Linked to Wrong-Way Driver Kills 6

Six people were killed early Sunday when the car a 17-year-old boy had driven the wrong way on the San Gabriel River Freeway for at least six miles crashed head-on with a car carrying five people, the California Highway Patrol reported.

About a minute after that collision, a third car plowed into the wreckage, causing the car carrying the five people to burst into flames.

CHP Public Affairs Officer Lyle Whitten said Mark Wayne Platz, 24, of San Gabriel, driver of the third car, was arrested and charged with felony drunk driving and vehicular manslaughter. He was treated for cuts on his head and knee and was held in County Jail on $2,500 bail.

The wrong-way driver and the five people in the second car all were killed.

“It’s very possible, very probable that someone could have been alive” after the first collision, Whitten said.

It was the second time in three days that a wrong-way driver on a Southland freeway had been involved in an accident resulting in fatalities.

The names of the people in the car that caught fire were withheld, pending positive identification. Authorities also declined to identify the 17-year-old driver because his family had not been notified Sunday.

The youth was driving an Oldsmobile Omega southbound in the northbound lane of the freeway (Interstate 605) near Whittier when he collided with a Buick Skylark near Peck Road about 2:30 a.m. Sunday.

Another driver who passed the accident and was returning to help said he saw Platz’s car hit the rear end of the Skylark, Whitten said.

The people in the Skylark included three men and two girls who reportedly were returning to Azusa after attending a wedding reception elsewhere.

Witnesses reported seeing the southbound car heading the wrong way on the freeway as far north as Arrow Highway--about six miles from the accident. Cars were “swerving all over the freeway to avoid hitting him,” witnesses told the Highway Patrol.

The youth who was driving in the wrong direction was not carrying a driver’s license and was identified by a student identification card, Whitten said. On Sunday, the coroner’s office could not locate his family, who recently moved from Cudahy, he said.

The Highway Patrol called friends’ telephone numbers that were found in his wallet, but still could not find out where the family moved, he said.

The body of the teen-age driver and the driver of the Skylark will be checked for alcohol content, Whitten said.

Last Thursday, four people were killed in a crash allegedly caused by a 25-year-old man who was driving east in the westbound lane of the Ventura Freeway in Agoura. His pickup truck collided head-on with a car carrying the four people who died.

The wrong-way driver, Daniel E. Murray, was treated for minor injuries and arrested on suspicion of vehicular homicide, the CHP has said. He is being held in County Jail without bail pending arraignment Tuesday.

Jamaal Brown, a 17-year-old basketball player at Buena High School in Ventura, was returning home from a game on the team bus when the bus passed the accident scene and he recognized his mother’s car. The four fatalities included his mother, 7-year-old brother, grandfather and girlfriend.