Hit-Run Car Turns Tandem Bike Ride to Tragedy : Grief: A teen-age girl is killed and her father seriously injured during an outing on a tandem bicycle. A San Marcos man is arrested on suspicion of drunken driving and other offenses.

Jerry Flaming wanted to help his daughter Brandy train for the high school track season, so he took her for a 15-mile tandem-bicycle ride along the coast.

Brandy, 17, had moved from her mother’s home in Iowa last week so she could live with her father and his wife in Carlsbad during her senior year.

But the father-daughter outing on a bicycle built for two ended shortly before 7 p.m. Monday, when a hit-and-run motorist struck them from behind, killing the teen-ager and critically injuring her father. A witness reportedly chased the suspect down and talked him into returning to the scene.

William J. Meiss, 51, of San Marcos, was booked into the County Jail at Vista Monday night on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter, felony hit-and-run driving, and drunken driving causing injury, Carlsbad Police Sgt. Howard Carpenter said. Meiss had made bail and was out of jail by 1 a.m. Tuesday.

Department of Motor Vehicles records show that Meiss has received three citations since 1988 for speeding, DMV spokesman Robert Menachan said.

Brandy died at the scene, on Carlsbad Boulevard north of Poinsettia Lane. Jerry Flaming, 48, suffered massive head injuries and was being treated Tuesday at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, where relatives said his chances for a full recovery are slim.

“They don’t give him much of a chance of being anything but a vegetable,” said Pearre Davenport, Jerry Flaming’s brother-in-law, who flew in from Dallas. “They say he’ll never be the same.”

Although Davenport said both bicyclists were wearing safety helmets, Brandy Flaming died of brain lacerations and skull fractures, and Jerry Flaming suffered massive head injuries.

According to Carpenter, police were able to make an arrest because a witness followed the suspected hit-and-run driver as he drove away from the accident and told him to return.

The witness, Curtis Brown of Leucadia, told police that he confronted the motorist at three separate stops, ordering him to return to the scene. The third time, the man obeyed. Brown could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

On Tuesday afternoon, friends and relatives of the Flamings huddled in small clusters in the hallways outside the intensive care waiting room.

“It’s just one of those things that just shouldn’t happen,” said Sharon Pearson, a friend of the family from Laguna Beach. “It was day, he should have been able to see a bicycle.”

Bicycling is an important part of Jerry Flaming’s life and something he and his daughter Brandy were going to do together so she could get in shape for track season, said Rodger Flaming, Jerry Flaming’s brother.

When the two failed to return from their ride, Jerry Flaming’s wife, Jane, called her sister so they could go out and look for the pair, who they feared might have had a flat tire.

“They drove the route, and, when they pulled up, they saw the twisted bike,” Rodger Flaming said.

Relatives said Jane Flaming, 42, was holding up under the strain. She and Jerry, who have no children, have been married for about four years, said Debbie Teclaw, Jane’s sister-in-law.

“She’s hanging in there,” Davenport said about his sister.

The Monday accident was Jane Flaming’s second major family tragedy. Almost seven years ago, Jane’s previous husband, Steven Erno, 36, and her 15-year-old son, David, and 12-year-old daughter, Kristina, were killed when a single-engine passenger plane in which they were riding crashed into a hillside east of San Marcos.

Brandy, whom relatives described as blond and slender, excelled in swimming, running track and playing basketball. They said she always spent summers with her father in Carlsbad.

Her enthusiasm for sports was part of what drew her close to her father, they said.

“They were very close,” Rodger Flaming said.

Brandy has two sisters who are both in their 20s, Rodger Flaming said.

No funeral arrangements have been made yet, but Rodger Flaming said her body would be flown back to the Flamings’ home town of Windom, Minn.

At the hospital, Rodger Flaming fought back tears when he talked about the long endurance bicycle rides he would go on with Jerry, who owned a company that specialized in embroidering decals and logos on T-shirts and caps.

Other family friends expressed hope that the physical strength Jerry Flaming had built up during his years of bicycling might help pull him through the trauma of his head injuries.

“It’s too bad you can’t strengthen your head like the rest of your body,” Pearson said.