Wrong-Way Driver Wanted Only ‘to Sleep’ Before Fatal Freeway Collision

Minutes before entering the San Diego Freeway in the wrong direction, Faith Robinson reportedly called her boyfriend early Saturday morning to say that she would be leaving a friend’s house and just wanted “to sleep.”

“From what we’ve been able to piece together, she was just exhausted,” said Robinson’s mother, Jeri Robinson, as she and the family Monday began piecing together the moments before Saturday morning’s fiery crash that left an Irvine man dead and his wife in a coma.

As the Robinson family attempted to recount the events in a cramped waiting room at Western Medical Center-Santa Ana, where their daughter was in critical condition, police were also trying to learn what caused the 23-year-old woman to continue in the wrong lane of traffic for about 8 miles.

California Highway Patrol officers, who gave chase but could not catch up with the wrong-way Buick Regal, reported that the vehicle weaved between lanes while traveling southbound in the northbound freeway lanes before ramming a car driven by an Irvine couple near the Bristol Street off-ramp in Costa Mesa.

Angel Johnson, an officer with the California Highway Patrol, said Robinson has been arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol. Blood-test results were not available Monday.

Killed in the crash was civil engineer Sang In Ahn, 50. His wife, Ook-Ja, 47, remained in critical condition Monday night at UCI Medical Center in Orange.

Jeri Robinson said her daughter left home about 10 p.m. Friday and went to the home of a friend, identified only as Tracy. The mother said Tracy told her that she and Faith talked until 3 a.m. Saturday, adding that Faith may have had one or two beers while they were visiting.

When Tracy went to bed, . Robinson said, Faith stayed to talk with Tracy’s brother until nearly 4 a.m. when she called her boyfriend, Steve Howard, and left word on his answering machine that she would soon leave.

About 20 minutes later, Jeri Robinson said, her daughter left another message on the boyfriend’s recorder, saying: “I’m really leaving. I just want to sleep. I’m tired.”

At 4:40 a.m., Johnson said, the CHP received a call from a mobile phone user to report that a vehicle had entered the San Diego Freeway at Westminster Boulevard heading in the wrong direction.

Johnson said four patrol cars, two from Santa Ana and two from Westminster, were dispatched in the southbound lanes in an attempt to get Robinson’s attention and get her vehicle out of the path of oncoming traffic.