Graduating Senior’s Death Stuns Fillmore : Accident: The 18-year-old was killed five hours after receiving his high school diploma.

In a high school graduation tragedy that shocked the small farm community of Fillmore, an 18-year-old Fillmore Senior High School graduate was killed early Friday morning when a car driven by a suspected drunk driver veered off a country road and smashed into a power pole.

James (Jimmy) Anderson, described as an extraordinarily responsible teen-ager who planned to join the Marines, was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident about 1:30 a.m. Friday, just five hours after his high school graduation ceremony.

The California Highway Patrol said Anderson was a passenger in a car driven by Justin Neff, 20, a former Fillmore Senior High graduate who had driven to Fillmore from Orange County for graduation festivities that preceded the fatal accident.

Neff, according to one account, had met Anderson at a late post-graduation party and agreed to give him a ride shortly before his car veered off a winding stretch of road just south of Fillmore and crashed into a wooden power pole.

The critically injured Neff was arrested by the California Highway Patrol for being under the influence of alcohol. As Neff struggled for life in the intensive care unit at Ventura County Medical Center, a CHP official said an investigation is in progress on whether to charge him with manslaughter.

CHP Officer Jim Utter said the accident happened on Guiberson Road, about a mile east of California 23 south of Fillmore. Anderson died of severe traumatic head injuries.

Utter said Neff’s Camaro was traveling west at a high speed on the two-lane road that winds around the base of a mountain when the car ran off the road. The force of the collision split the engine compartment from the passenger area of the car and Neff was ejected 30 feet from the car, Utter said.

Neff was rushed to the Ventura County Medical Center in Ventura, where he was listed in critical condition with multiple internal injuries.

Anderson’s friends said they do not know what happened between high school graduation, which ended about 8:15 p.m. on the athletic field at Fillmore Senior High School, and the accident. Anderson was one of 172 graduates in the 850-student school.

Neff’s girlfriend, Jackie Lozano, 18, said Neff had driven to Fillmore Thursday morning from Garden Grove to attend her graduation. Neff had graduated from the school in 1987.

In an interview in the Ventura County Medical Center waiting room, Lozano said she and Neff had driven around for several hours after graduation so that she could say goodby to friends. She said Neff dropped her off at her house about 12:30 a.m. and then went to another small party at a friend’s house.

At the party, Anderson asked Neff, an acquaintance, if he could get a ride, Lozano said she was told by friends.

“But somehow he lost control of the car,” Lozano said.

Another former Fillmore Senior High School student, Karin Grossman, discovered the accident scene while returning home from her job at McDonald’s between 1 and 1:30 a.m. She first drove to the house of her fiance, Robert Gomez Jr., and called the CHP. Then she and Gomez, who both knew Anderson and Neff, returned to the scene.

Gomez said the car was split in half with the passenger’s side wrapped around the power pole. Neff lay between the two halves of the car, Gomez said. Blood was everywhere, he said.

“It must have just happened,” Gomez said. “The motor was still hot, and the spilled beer was still wet on the ground.”

Grossman said she could smell alcohol that night, and Gomez said that when they went back to the spot the next morning, “beer cans were everywhere.”

On Friday, the couple--planning to get married today but still visibly shaken by the sight of the accident scene--remembered Anderson as a friendly student who liked to joke around and who was shy around girls. He had taken a welding class with Anderson, Gomez said.

Jerry Chandler, a photographer who knew Anderson from the Mormon Church, thought of him as a “nice, quiet kid.” Chandler said that when he took Anderson’s graduation picture he had to warm the quiet boy up a little bit.

He said Anderson “probably had the usual growing-up problems,” but he did not think Anderson had any problems with alcohol.

As the CHP continued its investigation into the accident, Anderson’s family and friends mourned the death. Donna Stephens, a family friend, described Anderson as a quiet and responsible teen-ager who never raised his voice while caring for his brothers and sisters.

Anderson had two younger brothers, two younger sisters and an older brother, Alan, who just finished military duty. Stephens said that Thursday morning, the day of his graduation, Anderson baby-sat her five children.

For two hours, Stephens said, Anderson sat quietly by the side of her two-month-old baby, holding and calming the infant boy every time he started to cry.

Anderson also was eager to pitch in and help his parents, Chuck and Linda Anderson, Stephens said.

“Very quietly and without being asked,” Anderson would wash the windows and sweep down the sides of the house, which his parents were trying to sell, Stephens said.

Mark Gibson, who taught Anderson’s Mormon youth group class, said the boy was “looking forward” to military service.

“He was a responsible, honest and sensitive man,” Gibson said. “As far as I know about Jimmy, he was a first-class act.”

Gibson said he wept when he heard of Anderson’s death. News of the accident rocked the small community of Fillmore, a town of 11,000.

“Any time there is a death of this magnitude, it’s a tragedy, especially when it happens at such a young age,” said Mayor John Murphy.

City residents, worried by rumors that began circulating this morning, besieged the CHP with phone calls, anxious to learn the identity of the dead boy.

Robert P. Rivas, assistant principal at Fillmore Senior High School, said news of Anderson’s death stunned the school.

“The entire staff was very shaken,” Rivas said. “Everyone will tell you that he was just a very nice kid.”

The school has called grief counselors to talk with students who were close to Anderson and others who may be upset over the fifth death of a high school student in Fillmore during the academic year, Assistant Principal Patricia Lagger said.

Two teen-agers were killed in a car accident in October. Another was killed in a car accident, also in October, involving four students from the school. One of the youths who survived that accident was killed in another car accident a month later. Another boy committed suicide in January, she said.

“This has been a very difficult year for us,” Lagger said. “We’re very sad.”

Times staff writers Adrianne Goodman, Santiago O’Donnell and Janet Bergamo contributed to this story.