Woman Killed as Car Plows Into Home

A mother of two was crushed to death under the wheels of a car Thursday evening when a driver believed to be drunk crashed through the wall of her South-Central Los Angeles apartment, police said.

Despite efforts to save her by neighbors and her eldest son, Martha Luna, 31, whom neighbors described as quiet and friendly, was pronounced dead at the scene, a three-unit apartment in a business and residential area on South Central Avenue. Her two sons, Gabriel, 11, and George, 9, suffered minor injuries in the accident.

Police arrested the driver of the car, Samuel Flanagan, 69, on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter under the influence of alcohol. A loaded gun was removed from his car as evidence but is “probably not related” to the case, said Detective Richard Litsinger of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Central Traffic Division.

Luna and her sons had been lying on a mattress, watching television and eating dinner in the bedroom of a small apartment they shared with a neighbor, when Flanagan, driving on Central Avenue at 6:45 p.m. lost control of his car and crashed through the wall, police said.

The car pinned the victim under the tires, crushing her, but missed her sons, who received only cuts and bruises from flying debris.

Police were unsure of how fast Flanagan was driving when he crashed into the wall.

“It sounded like a sonic boom,” said Eric Pullins, a neighbor who heard the crash. Pullins, 33, said the sound was loud enough to send people in nearby shops and houses running into the street to see what had happened.

A crowd of about 60 people formed as Pullins and several others tried to lift the wreckage and car off the woman, he said.

“When we uncovered her head, she was knocked cold, but we felt a weak pulse in her neck. The children were screaming for their mother, and the oldest boy was trying to pull her from underneath the car,” Pullins said.

Firefighters lifted the car off Luna, but paramedics were unable to revive her.

The two boys are being cared for by Luna’s sister, Raquel Valenzuela of Los Angeles. Luna moved into the apartment only a month ago, after breaking up with her boyfriend, said Maria Guterrez, a next-door neighbor and close friend of the victim.

Guterrez, 31, said Luna and her sons only used the bedroom of the apartment at night. During most of the day, the family stayed next door in Guterrez’s apartment.

“She was a nice person, quiet--she stayed home all the time,” said Guterrez, who had known Luna for nine years. “She was like our family,” added her son, Todd JoJola, 13.

Luna, who immigrated nine years ago from Mexico, was unemployed but last week had begun a class to learn English so she could learn to type, Guterrez said. Luna had worked for several years as a seamstress in a sewing shop after she arrived in the United States, her friend said.