Illegal Drivers Take a Toll: 1 Dead, 4 Hurt

Four children were injured Thursday, two seriously, when a teen-ager with no driver’s license lost control of her family’s car in Watts, plowed through a chain-link fence and struck the youngsters in a yard where they were playing, police said.

In a separate accident, another unlicensed teen-age driver struck and killed an 8-year-old boy in Central Los Angeles, officers said.

In the Watts accident, the two seriously injured youngsters were cousins of the 15-year-old driver, relatives said, but they would not identify her because of her age.

Marquise Munn, 2, was pinned beneath the car until neighbors were able to free the boy by lifting the car, witnesses said. He was in stable condition at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance.

His sister, Amber, 3, was taken to Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, where hospital officials said her condition was critical but stable. Relatives said she suffered a fractured skull.

Two 4-year-olds whose identities were not immediately available were treated at St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood and released.

Investigators said the young driver reported that the car’s accelerator had stuck.

But police said evidence at the scene did not confirm that version of events. There were skid marks coming around the corner, going up the curb and into the yard at the home in the 700 block of East 103rd Street, said Los Angeles Police Officer William Rugh.

In the second accident, an unidentified 17-year-old girl with no driver’s license struck and killed the 8-year-old boy. His friends said he had suddenly ridden his skateboard into the street “right in front of her car.”