2 Bodies Found in Car Over Side of Freeway
Two men were found dead Thursday morning in a car that had gone off the Antelope Valley Freeway and tumbled down an embankment in Lancaster, the California Highway Patrol reported.
The station wagon containing the bodies of a 34-year-old Tehachapi man and a 30-year-old Bakersfield man was spotted by a nearby resident at 6 a.m., Officer Scott McKnight said. The vehicle was in a flood-control channel alongside the northbound freeway lanes between Avenue J and Lancaster Boulevard, he said.
The victims’ names were not released pending notification of families.
Investigators believe that the accident occurred between 11:30 p.m. Wednesday and 1:30 a.m. Thursday.
McKnight said the two men had been drinking Wednesday night at a party in Palmdale, where the Tehachapi man got into a fight with the owner of the station wagon and then took the vehicle without permission. The Bakersfield man went with him.
Investigators believe that the Tehachapi man was driving north on the freeway when the car drifted off the right shoulder. McKnight said the car hit an emergency call box on the shoulder, and a three-inch-wide pipe went through the windshield and impaled the driver, killing him instantly.
The car then tumbled into the drainage channel and the passenger was fatally injured, he said.
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