Lancaster Man Charged With Murder : Jury Selection to Begin in Collision Case in Which 4 Died

Jury selection is to begin today in the trial of a Lancaster man accused of murdering four people 17 months ago in a head-on collision while driving the wrong way on the Ventura Freeway.

Daniel E. Murray, 27, is charged with second-degree murder, vehicular manslaughter and felony drunk driving in the Dec. 11, 1986, crash near Liberty Canyon Road in Agoura. Killed were Suzanne Brown, 37, her son Jonah Brown, 7, her father, Jack Rawls, 69, and Dia Rae Rounds, 16, all of Ventura.

The tragedy was compounded when Suzanne Brown’s son Jamaal, 18, came upon the crash scene while riding home on a bus with fellow members of the Buena High School basketball team. His family and Rounds, his girlfriend, had been heading home after seeing him play earlier that night in Beverly Hills.

“It’s a terrible tragedy for everyone,” said Charles R. English, an attorney representing Murray, who has been in custody since the crash. He is being held in lieu of $250,000 bail.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Phillip H. Rabichow, who is prosecuting the case, said in court papers that on the night of the crash, Murray took the wheel of his pickup truck knowing that driving drunk could result in someone’s death or injury.

Murray attended three separate drunk-driving awareness courses in 1979, 1980 and 1983 after being convicted of drunk driving in two cases and reckless driving while intoxicated in a third case, according to court documents.

If convicted of all charges, Murray could be sentenced to a maximum of 61 years to life imprisonment.

English will not dispute that Murray was driving the wrong way or that he was drunk at the time, he said. Instead he will argue that Murray simply was too drunk to be aware of the risks involved in taking the wheel, he said.

Tests of a blood sample drawn from Murray about an hour after the crash showed a blood-alcohol level of 0.19%, nearly twice the state’s legal standard for drunkenness. Records show that English has obtained the court’s permission to have Murray evaluated by a psychiatrist and a neurologist, and to have Murray’s original blood sample tested for stimulants.

“Danny has no idea what happened” in the crash, English said. “He’s a blank from early evening.”

Murray is married and has a 2-year-old son, his lawyer said.

On the night of the crash, Murray was “only slightly intoxicated” when he left a party at Northrop Corp. in Hawthorne, where he worked, according to a summary of the prosecution’s allegations filed with the court.

He then bought beer at a liquor store and drove to the Torrance area, where he bought a Christmas tree, the court document says.

About three hours after leaving the Christmas tree lot, Murray was driving erratically on the westbound Ventura Freeway, the document says. Murray made a U-turn into oncoming traffic and drove for at least three miles at speeds estimated at 50 to 75 m.p.h. before striking the Honda Accord driven by Suzanne Brown, it said.

Northrop fired Murray, an equipment operator, after his arrest, English said.

Jamaal Brown is now nearing the end of his freshman year at Stanford University, but the tragedy still troubles him, said Mary Lovio, a family friend and full-time nurse caring for his grandmother.

On Sunday, Jamaal called home and told his grandmother that “he went to the beach and said a prayer there,” Lovio said. “He was very lonely for Mother’s Day.”