False Report About Crash Spurs Move to Curtail Beer Sales

Agoura Hills officials have apparently made a wrong turn of their own in reacting to a wrong-way-driver crash on the Ventura Freeway that killed four people last month.

City Council members moved this week to ban the sale of alcoholic beverages at gasoline stations after being falsely told that the allegedly drunken driver accused of causing the crash bought beer at Agoura Hills’ lone service-station mini-mart.

Officials ordered staff members to prepare a draft ordinance prohibiting such sales. A council vote is planned in 30 days.

The sales ban was proposed by Councilman Jack W. Koenig after he read a local newspaper account of the Dec. 11 collision that reported that the wrong-way driver purchased beer at the Mobil service station before entering the Ventura Freeway at Chesebro Road.

Was Already Drunk

But California Highway Patrol officials have concluded that suspect Daniel E. Murray was already under the influence of alcohol before driving his pickup truck to Agoura Hills.

Capt. Richard Kerri, commander of the CHP’s West Valley Station in Woodland Hills, said Murray, 25, of Lancaster did not buy any alcohol at the Agoura Hills store. Kerri said Murray made a U-turn in westbound lanes of the freeway near the Chesebro Road off-ramp, then headed east.

About a mile later, he allegedly crashed head-on into a sedan driven by Ventura school teacher Suzanne Brown, 37. Brown was killed, as were the three passengers in her car: her father, Jack Rawls, 69, her son, Jonah Brown, 7, and a friend, Dia Rae Rounds, 16.

The tragedy was compounded when Brown’s older son, Jamaal Brown, 17, spotted the wreckage as he passed by a few minutes later on a school bus that was returning from a high school basketball game.

Murray has been charged with four counts of second-degree murder. Officials said his blood-alcohol reading after the crash was .19%, nearly twice the level at which a driver is presumed to be legally drunk.

Koenig’s proposed ban drew emotional support both from residents and law-enforcement officials during a council workshop on Tuesday night.

“This may not be the answer, but it’s something,” said Lobo Canyon homeowner Karen DePew, leader of a campaign two years ago for tougher traffic enforcement along Agoura’s Kanan Road.

“It’s very clear to all of us that alcohol and gasoline don’t mix,” said Calabasas Municipal Court Commissioner Richard Brand.

CHP Favors Ban

The CHP’s Kerri, who was not questioned specifically about the Dec. 11 crash, told council members that he favors the sales ban.

Koenig said Agoura Hills’ relationship to the Ventura Freeway is unique because “we’re astride the freeway and you can’t get out of the city without using it unless you take a tortuous mountain road.”

It is “chancing too much” to let gasoline stations also sell alcoholic beverages, he said.

City Planning Director Paul Williams, who is handling the sales ban proposal for the council, was surprised when told later that Murray did not buy beer at the Agoura Hills gas station.

Jeff Amin, manager of the Mobil mini-market who also denied that Murray purchased beer there, said he will oppose efforts to ban alcoholic beverage sales.

“This is my livelihood and they have no right to play with it,” he said.