Garden Grove : 2 Injured as Car Crashes and Is Then Rear-Ended
Two Huntington Beach men were critically injured early Sunday morning in a crash that forced the closure of part of the Garden Grove Freeway for two hours, authorities said.
The men were traveling west on the freeway in a Chevrolet Camaro when it slammed into the center divider west of the Brookhurst Street off-ramp about 3:45 a.m., California Highway Patrol officers said.
The car bounced off the divider and came to rest, straddling two traffic lanes, CHP officers said. As the driver of the Camaro tried to pull his injured passenger from the car, a Datsun rear-ended them, the CHP said.
Paramedics rushed the men, who were not immediately identified pending family notification, to the Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center. CHP officers said Saviour J. Carauna, 29, suffered a spinal injury. The driver, Anthony J. George, 30, suffered a fractured arm, head trauma, a bruised chest and facial cuts.
They said the driver of the Datsun, Carol Ann Munafo, 24, of Huntington Beach, was not injured.
Officers said that because of the darkness at that hour and because of the elevation of the roadway at the crash site, it did not appear that the Datsun driver was at fault in the crash.
Westbound lanes of the freeway were closed at Euclid Street and reopened about 5:30 a.m., a CHP dispatcher said.
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