Victim Was Hooked on Beauty of Ortega Highway

Forrest Harper and his pals often hopped in a pickup truck and drove down rustic Ortega Highway to take in the scenery, sun and fresh air.

“He was a nature lover and loved the area,” Harper’s father, Walt, said Thursday. “The last thing he told us was he wanted to go out there and watch the sun go down.”

Several hours after 20-year-old Forrest Harper spoke those words to his father, he and two companions were dead, victims of a traffic accident on Ortega Highway. The truck they were riding in spun out of control on the two-lane highway, flipped and skidded to a stop 175 yards from where it first left the road, California Highway Patrol Officer Ken Daily said.

Two other passengers were hospitalized for various injuries suffered in the Wednesday evening accident.

The driver, Jose Juan Perez, 22, of San Juan Capistrano, was the only person in the truck to escape injury, Daily said. Perez, a carpet cleaner, was arrested and booked into Orange County Central Jail, where he is being held on $25,000 bail.

He faces arraignment today in South County Municipal Court on felony drunk driving and gross vehicular manslaughter charges, Orange County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Lt. Richard J. Olson said.

Daily said Perez was driving toward San Juan Capistrano about three miles east of Interstate 5 at an undetermined rate of speed when the truck veered across the highway, struck a steep dirt embankment and tumbled to a stop. There were no skid marks that would indicate Perez was trying to slow down.

All five passengers were thrown from the truck, Daily said, but the three young men sitting in the truck bed were the ones to die.

The other passengers had been sitting in the cab, which had been customized and did not have a roof. The driver was the only person wearing a seat belt, Daily said.

The identities of two of the dead men remained unconfirmed Thursday. They had been pronounced dead at the scene.

Harper, Miguel Angel Rodriguez Perez, 26, and Rafael Granados Gomes, 22, were taken to Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center for treatment of injuries. Harper died an hour later of massive head injuries, Daily said.

Rodriguez was treated for moderate cuts and abrasions and released, hospital spokeswoman Nancy Gasho said. Granados was admitted with a head injury with concussion and lacerations, she said.

Daily said that officers found empty beer cans in Perez’s truck but that they did not appear to have been opened recently.

Walt Harper said the truck belonged to one of the unidentified dead men. That man, whom Walt Harper knew only as Jose, was his son’s best friend and business partner. The pair had been doing odd jobs together for several months in the San Juan Capistrano area, he said.

“They were building themselves quite a business,” said Dianne Harper, Forrest’s mother.

Sitting in their neat Del Obispo Street apartment, Dianne Harper choked back tears as she talked about Forrest, the couple’s only son, who came late in their marriage.

“We waited 18 years for that boy,” she said. “I still can’t believe he’s gone.”