A Short Drag Race Leaves Little to Comfort the Living

Francisco Gambino came Monday to look for memories of his brother and three other relatives who died after their car crashed and burst into flames during a drag race the night before.

There was not much.

Gambino found a mangled cassette tape--it had been his cousin’s favorite, he explained--and a shred of red cloth from a shirt. His 4-year-old son laid two twigs in the shape of a cross near the fire-blackened street-light pole.

“It is unbelievable. It is amazing,” Gambino said of the sudden tragedy only days before Thanksgiving. “We were playing cards just last night.”

But the penny-ante poker game broke up when the brother, Benito Gambino, 19, decided to drive some of his poker partners to a party. Benito was joined by cousin Pedro Carrasco Martinez, 23; Sergio Padilla Orejel, 24, who was the cousin of Francisco’s wife, and Antonio Pulido Arteaga, 25, Francisco’s brother-in-law. All four lived in Santa Ana.

Driving another brother’s aging Ford Maverick, Benito Gambino apparently decided to try to race another driver in a black Chevrolet Corvette as both drove north on Bristol Street.

The race did not last long--just a block or two, police said. Gambino apparently lost control and the car slammed into the light standard near Park Lane with such force that it was nearly cut in two. Then, as passers-by frantically ran to the car to try to free the trapped men, the car burst into flames.

“We were so mad because we couldn’t do nothing,” said Elias Ramirez, a neighbor who drove to the accident scene after hearing the crash near his house. “We didn’t hear anyone screaming inside the car. They were just (burned).”

Even when the fire was finally quelled, the accident was so devastating that, according to Ramirez, even police officers winced.

“Every time a cop went to look, he just put his flashlight down and his head down and walked away,” he said.

The other driver did not stick around, stopping briefly to survey the accident, then speeding off.

Police spokeswoman Maureen Thomas said “drag racing is a continuous problem, though no worse in Santa Ana than anywhere else. . . . Teen-agers are prone to this kind of drag racing some time.”

Francisco Gambino said his brother drank three or four beers as they played poker before getting behind the wheel. The Orange County coroner’s office reported that blood alcohol-level tests were still pending.

Benito Gambino routinely drove fast, according to his brother.

“He liked the high speeds. I kept telling him not to drive fast, but he would tell me, ‘I don’t have no one to tell me what to do.’ What could I do?”

Francisco said he tried to activate his brother’s electronic paging device late in the evening Sunday just to make sure he was all right. He said his brother carried a beeper because of his work as a glass installer.

But it was not until 5 a.m. when a police officer came to the door that he learned about the deaths of the four men.

Francisco came to the accident scene with five other moist-eyed family members. They paced the sooty asphalt, looking for anything that might resemble personal belongings of any of the victims.

Angelica Orejel, whose husband died in the accident, came to the scene without her 1-year-old daughter. “I am just very sad,” she said softly.