3 Killed, 2 Injured as Car Hits Power Pole in Carson

Three young men were killed and two were injured, one seriously, when their speeding car slammed into a power pole in Carson Wednesday night and split in half from the impact.

Sheriff’s deputies identified the victims as four male teen-agers and one man in his early 20s, but did not release their names.

A witness who was jogging in the area told investigators a blue Hyundai was traveling south at 8:33 p.m. in the 19000 block of Wilmington Avenue at up to 70 m.p.h. when it went out of control and hit the pole, said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Lamar Bleavins.

The driver and four passengers were thrown from the car on impact, he said. Three of the men were pronounced dead at the scene. The two others were taken to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, Bleavins said, one with serious injuries and the other with cuts and bruises.

Jogger Louis Evans, 21, saw the car speeding south on Wilmington Avenue. “I thought they were horsing around,” he said. The driver then braked sharply, and the car hit the utility pole and “twisted up like it was cheap paper,” Evans said.

Elizabeth Poole of Compton said she was picking up cans and bottles along the edge of James Anderson Jr. Memorial Park, when she saw one passenger thrown free of the wreckage. He scrambled to his feet and walked back to the car dazed, she said.

Authorities found the man wandering in the park looking for his shoe, which had been thrown clear during the crash.

In a separate high-speed traffic fatality hours earlier, a 23-year-old suspected drunk driver who led sheriff’s deputies on an 80-m.p.h. chase through Norwalk was fatally injured when he lost control of his car and it smashed into a tree, authorities said.

Ruben Veliz Carrera of Norwalk was pronounced dead at Norwalk Community Hospital at 2:12 a.m., said Sgt. Robert Stoneman, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Carrera was “weaving erratically” on Alondra Boulevard when deputies tried to stop him about 12:40 a.m., Stoneman said. About two miles later, he car lost control of the car, which sheared off a light pole and struck a tree, Stoneman said.