Suspect Arrested in Deaths of 2 Teen Campers Crushed by Auto

A 24-year-old Bellflower man arrested in connection with the weekend deaths of two teen-age campers at San Onofre State Park will be arraigned today on suspicion of felony drunk driving, felony hit and run and two counts of vehicular manslaughter, a spokesman for the California Highway Patrol said Monday.

The license plate number on the vehicle the suspect left at the scene led police to arrest Douglas John Freels at his home about seven hours after the incident, which investigators believe occurred at 2:30 a.m. Sunday, Oceanside CHP Officer Jerry Bohrer said.

Freels was being held in the Vista Detention Facility on $10,000 bail.

Graham Jacob Grubb, 18, of Laguna Niguel and his girlfriend, Amanda Jocon Ciskowski, 19, of San Diego, were crushed to death, apparently in their sleep, CHP officials said. Surfers discovered their bodies about half an hour after the accident.

A passenger in Freels’ car, identified by police as John Herrera of Downey, was questioned and released, Bohrer said.

Investigators also provided new details about how the accident occurred.

They said the suspect was driving north at about 30 m.p.h. down the wrong side of old U.S. 101, six miles south of Basilone Road. The car veered off the narrow two-lane road and struck the tent where Grubb and Ciskowski were sleeping, police said. The tent was pitched next to the highway in a parking lot that closes at 10 p.m., said Steve Long, a lifeguard supervisor at the park.

The driver allegedly ran over the couple, struck the rear of Grubb’s vehicle and dragged the bodies under the rear wheels of his car for about 35 feet before coming to a stop, Bohrer said.

The driver and his passenger then went to a pay telephone and called a cab to take them home, officers said.

“They (the bodies) were still there when we arrived,” Bohrer said, adding that Freels told officers that “he felt like he hit something, but didn’t know what it was.”

Times staff writer Jonathan Gaw contributed to this report from Vista.