Death, Injury After School : Sisters’ Auto Crash Devastates Family

Kai Wang stood in the family room of his home in Costa Mesa on Wednesday afternoon, cradling a studio portrait of his three children and remembering the day last spring when his two teen-age girls and his 11-year-old son presented the gift to his wife for Mother’s Day.

“That is the kind of children they are,” Wang said softly of his daughters, Cori and Pei. “Nobody helped them do it, they just went out and got it taken by themselves.”

On Tuesday, on a winding, dipping stretch of Placentia Avenue near Estancia High School, a sporty maroon Honda Acura which Wang had given to his oldest daughter last fall spun out of control, crossed the center line and slammed into a light pole on the other side of the street.

Cori Wang, who was the only passenger in the car, was killed instantly. Pei, who was driving, suffered massive head and internal injuries and was later reported in critical condition at Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center. Both girls had just left Estancia High, where they were students.

The evidence indicates that Pei probably was drag racing with a car driven by her boyfriend, also 16 and also an Estancia student, just before the accident occurred, according to Floyd Waldron, the Costa Mesa police investigator in the case.

Kai Wang, owner of a landscaping business who brought his family to the United States from Taiwan 13 years ago, vehemently disputed that.

“She would never race or speed. She was such a good girl,” he said. “People should not assume they were speeding just because they are teen-agers.”

A witness to the accident, a girl who was a passenger in the car Pei’s boyfriend was driving, told the family that neither car was traveling faster than 50 m.p.h., said Sandy Wang, the girls’ aunt. The speed of both cars had picked up, the witness told the family, because they were traveling downhill. The speed limit is 40 m.p.h. along that stretch of Placentia.

Waldron acknowledged Wednesday afternoon that not all of the witnesses to the accident had been interviewed. He said that skid marks on the road indicated that the Acura was traveling between 60 and 65 m.p.h. when it started braking.

“They were almost certainly going faster than that before she tried to slow down,” said Waldron. The race, he said, “was probably just a spur of the moment thing.”

The force of the crash was so tremendous, Waldron said, that the entire right side of the vehicle was caved in, trapping Cori inside. Further investigation, he said, will determine whether anyone will be charged in the case.

Waldron said numerous accidents have occurred along Placentia near the high school through the years and that most of them involved speeding.

Sandy Wang said Tuesday’s tragedy had left Pei’s boyfriend uninjured but devastated. Her family, she said, especially the mother of the girls, was reeling from the blow. Both girls, she said, were well-liked, had numerous friends and were very involved in school activities.

Pei, who turned 16 in October, the same month she received her new car, played tennis at Estancia High and is a member of the school’s vocal ensemble, said Estancia Principal Robert Francy. She stands out among the school’s 1,400 students, he said, mainly because of her singing.

“Normally you don’t see a sophomore in the ensemble, but Pei apparently got in while she was still a freshman,” said Francy. Sandy Wang said Pei had returned Monday from her last out-of-town engagement with the chorale, a trip to San Francisco.

Blood Drive Planned

Cori Wang, whose Taiwanese name was Pei-Chen, was a budding dramatist. On the day of the accident, Estancia students said, she had been seen at the school dressed to perform in a play she had written.

The students said they planned to organize a blood drive for Pei Wang, who has already undergone one round of surgery to repair internal organs.

Chris Hall, a 15-year-old Estancia student who said he had a math class with Cori, spent part of Wednesday afternoon with three friends walking along Placentia to find the spot where the accident occurred.

They set up a small wooden cross as a memorial at the scene of the accident. Hall said they left school early because being there was like attending “a 6-hour funeral.”

“We didn’t do any work,” he said. “We just looked at films and talked about what happened. I couldn’t handle it.”

Estancia administrators said psychologists and counselors had been brought into the school to discuss the accident with students. They will remain as long as they are needed, he said.

Funeral services for Cori Wang are scheduled for 11 a.m. Saturday at Dilday Brothers Chapel in Huntington Beach.