Wrong-Way Driver, 2 Others Killed in Head-On Collision

Three Orange County residents were killed early Thursday in a head-on collision involving a wrong-way driver suspected of being drunk, police said.

The driver of a van heading the wrong way on eastbound 7th Street was identified as Choong Kim, 47, of Garden Grove. Kim was taken to St. Mary’s Medical Center in Long Beach with critical injuries, but died about nine hours after the accident.

Two other victims in the 2 a.m. crash, the driver of a Fiat and his female passenger, died at the scene, a stretch of 7th Street just west of its junction with the San Diego Freeway.

The Fiat driver was identified as Augustine Moreno, 18, of Santa Ana, and his passenger was Guadalupe Romero-Mendoza, 21, Long Beach Police Detective Don Terrell said.

Terrell said Kim is suspected of drunk driving and that his autopsy will include toxicological tests for alcohol and drugs. Results will not be available for several weeks.

Other details of the fatal accident remained sketchy, Terrell said, because it is not clear how and where Kim entered the eastbound lanes of 7th Street, before striking Moreno’s car about 160 feet west of where the road spans the San Gabriel River channel.

“We’re not real positive where he came from,” Terrell said. “There are no cross streets in that area.”

The portion of 7th Street where the accident occured has a 30-foot-wide earthen divider, with the two westbound lanes on a grade about six to eight feet higher than the two eastbound lanes where the Fiat and the van collided, Terrell said. Both cars were traveling at speeds well over 40 m.p.h., in the far left lane, he said.