Girl’s Death Leaves Mother and Police Asking Who’s to Blame

The traffic death of her 13-year-old daughter last weekend has been devastating, with the shattering of ordinary routines between parent and child the toughest to handle, Ann Ashburn said Tuesday.

Driving by the bus stop where Rebecca Ashburn gathered each morning with her friends, calling one fewer name to dinner each night--that is when the loss of her daughter seems most profound, the 34-year-old Laguna Hills mother said.

“Normal things are hard,” Ashburn said. “You never figure you’re going to bury your children. You expect that your children will someday bury you.”

Not knowing who is to blame for the hit-run crash that suddenly killed Rebecca outside Knott’s Berry Farm last Saturday night has made the loss almost unbearable, said Ashburn, a buyer in the printed circuit industry, who has two other daughters, ages 18 and 15.

“The thing is someone committed a felony; it’s against the law to take someone’s life. (Rebecca’s death) is a murder to me until they prove it otherwise. And if it was otherwise, why haven’t any of the people in that truck come forward?”

Hoping for Public Response

It is a question Buena Park police officers are hoping the public can help answer.

Dressed in a light-colored shirt, a black miniskirt and matching pumps, Becky--as her friends and family called her--was struck in a southbound lane of Beach Boulevard at 11:43 p.m. last Saturday by a dark-blue truck. Witnesses, including two girlfriends who narrowly escaped, have told police that there were at least four people in the back of the truck and up to three in the truck’s cab.

Police said that Becky was struck by the right front of the truck as she was crossing the center southbound lane of the street. Her mother said the girlfriends said that Becky had just stepped off the westbound curb, intending to jaywalk across Beach. The impact hurled the 4-foot-8 girl about 90 feet down the road and shattered the truck’s front windshield and headlight, police said.

Sgt. Terry Branum said the truck, with a gray horizontal stripe on its sides and tinted side and back windows, stopped momentarily in front of the girl’s body and then veered to the right around it, continuing south on the boulevard before turning onto Crescent Avenue.

According to Branum, there were a couple of hundred youths gathered outside the amusement park south of La Palma Avenue in a spot where parents regularly pick up “kids in the 13-to-15 age bracket” after the park’s midnight closing. It is within 150 feet of the spot where Becky screamed at her two girlfriends and was then hit by the truck, Branum said.

However, Branum said just three or four of the youths were able to provide good descriptions of the truck, and Becky’s girlfriends had focused their attention on her and not the vehicle.

Police Friday asked for public help in finding the truck driver and his passengers.

4 or 5 in Truck

“But I think the main thing we are trying to get to is one of those four or five people in the truck,” he added. “I would think one of them has a conscience. That’s what we’re hoping for, anyway.”

Anyone with information is asked to call the Buena Park Police Department at (714) 521-9352 and ask for Officer John Burns in the traffic bureau.

With the few leads and witness reports, Branum said, officers believe the truck’s driver was male. Pieces of the truck’s front windshield and shards of the amber-colored front light--found on the street after the crash--helped identify the vehicle as a Toyota. Witnesses said the white reflectorized license plate had a frame with blinking lights.

Branum said the customized lights and the concentration of teen-age girls waiting outside Knott’s for their parents led him to theorize that the truck driver and his passengers were young and male, out cruising the boulevard.

The driver apparently made no effort to stop before hitting the girl, because there were no skid marks on the pavement, so Branum speculated that “it could have been some kids playing chicken, thinking she would get out of the way.”

Ashburn said: “Somewhere, (the truck driver) has parents or relatives or friends who have seen that truck smashed up. Somebody has to have a conscience.”

Affected Many People

The death of Becky, a seventh-grader at Serrano Intermediate School in Lake Forest and a member of Laguna Hills Calvary Church, has affected many people, her mother said.

Becky shared a room with her sister, Patricia, who cannot sleep, Ashburn said. The two friends who narrowly escaped the crash and watched their chum of five years die are undergoing counseling.

“There were hundreds of kids at her memorial services; she had a way of touching people’s hearts,” Ashburn said of the ceremony Wednesday.

“She was cremated Tuesday. I couldn’t bury her. I couldn’t stand the thought of putting her into the ground. I hope the people in that truck know what they have done.”