Dutch Musician Relives I-5 Crash That Killed Girlfriend

Laurens van Beveren lies in a hospital bed in La Jolla, the only member of the Dutch singing troupe still in the United States.

“My wounds will heal, but his nightmare will never go away,” Van Beveren said of the man accused of causing the chain-reaction accident on a darkened stretch of Interstate 5.

Van Beveren is one of the survivors of the Sept. 24 crash near San Clemente that left his girlfriend and two other members the Dutch group dead and 19 injured.

Van Beveren talked publicly Thursday for the first time about the accident, it’s aftermath and the truck driver accused of crashing his tractor-trailer rig into a line of slow-moving traffic.

Also Thursday, Neil R. Adams, 33, was arraigned in Municipal Court in San Diego County on six criminal counts, including gross negligence with a motor vehicle, driving under the influence of both alcohol and methamphetamines and driving with a suspended license.

Adams pleaded innocent and was allowed to remain free on $32,000 bail on the condition that he not drive a motor vehicle.

‘Has to Be Punished’

“Though it’s not going to bring my girlfriend back, I feel he (Adams) has to be punished,” Van Beveren said from his bed in Scripps Memorial Hospital.

But he added: “I only hate the man, not the country, or people, because they are not to blame.”

Van Beveren and the 19 other surviving members of the group of Dutch singers, musicians and support staff, are so grateful for the help they received following the accident that they plan to return to Southern California next year to complete the tour, troupe leader Tom Leeflang said.

“It’s awful that it happened, but we’re coming back next year to perform,” Leeflang said from Amsterdam. “We want to show the (Dutch-American) and American people how glad we are for the special way they helped us after the accident.”

Unlike Van Beveren, Leeflang said he harbored no animosity toward Adams. “I feel nothing bad towards the man,” Leeflang said. “What kind of feelings can I have?”

Van Beveren’s girlfriend, Wonny Ooft, 28, was buried in her native Amsterdam a week ago Thursday. Troupe member Jof Richares, 48, was buried in a separate ceremony the same day, while the funeral of colleague Wiellem Gannsen, 35, was held the day before.

More than 6,000 people attended the three funerals in Holland, Leeflang said. Services for the three were delayed until last week because the bodies had to be shipped to Holland from California.

Three days before the accident, the group of touring Dutch singers and musicians checked into a Buena Park motel that was to serve as their headquarters during two weeks of sightseeing and performing. They were scheduled to give two Los Angeles County shows for Southern California’s Dutch community, one of the nation’s largest.

The 23 Dutch tourists were returning from a visit to Sea World in San Diego at 6:45 p.m. Sept. 24. The California Highway Patrol said Adams was driving a tractor-trailer rig at about 55 m.p.h. that swerved left from the slow lane and slammed into one of the troupe’s two vans. The van had slowed to about 25 m.p.h. as it approached the Border Patrol checkpoint south of San Clemente, according to the CHP. Thursday, Van Beveren recalled that he was sitting in the rear of the van. Ooft was sitting on his left and Gannsen was sitting on his right.

“I heard somebody say a truck was coming, and it looked like it couldn’t brake,” Van Beveren said. “I turned my head around quick, and I saw this truck coming so fast.”

Just as Van Beveren turned his head forward, the truck rammed into the van. As the van came to a stop seconds later, Van Beveren said: “I looked down and saw Wiellem lying besides me. . . . He looked like he had passed away.

“Wonny had her head against the window, and she looked like she was sleeping,” Van Beveren said. “I thought she was unconscious. I didn’t know she was dead.”

Ooft and Gannsen died instantly from broken necks, the CHP said. Van Beveren suffered deep gashes to his left leg and two broken bones in his lower right leg. He has undergone four operations.

Van Beveren said he hopes to return to Holland Oct. 24. Doctors have told him that he may have to be hospitalized for six months undergoing treatment and physical rehabilitation to regain use of his right leg.

Within hours of the accident, it was front-page news in the Netherlands, said John H. Wesseling, the publisher of the Holland News, the Bellflower-based newspaper for Dutch-Americans that was sponsoring the two Los Angeles performances.

“The people in Holland were so grateful to the American people for all the help they gave the injured,” Wesseling said. “The people here outdid themselves to make the members of the group comfortable. So many people sent flowers and visited them in the hospital.”

Two other members of the singing group remain hospitalized in the Netherlands. Expenses related to the accident were covered by insurance, Leeflang said.

Leeflang, who was the tour’s promoter, suffered serious financial losses when the group’s two Southern California concerts were canceled. He would not say how much money he lost.

“Financial losses do not compare with human losses,” he said. “All the money in the world would not be enough to make our friends come back.”