Driver Faces 7-Year Term in Deaths

A 24-year-old man who pleaded guilty to vehicular manslaughter in the deaths of two teen-aged campers at San Onofre State Beach Park faces a maximum sentence of seven years and four months in state prison.

Douglas Freels entered guilty pleas to the two charges Wednesday in Vista Superior Court. In a plea bargain, charges of drunk driving and leaving the scene of an accident were dropped by prosecutor Greg Walden.

Freels was arrested Sept. 9 at his home in the Los Angeles suburb of Bellflower after his car was found at the beach parking area where two teen-agers had been run over and killed while sleeping in a small tent they had pitched.

According to the California Highway Patrol, Freels had been driving north in the southbound lanes of former Highway 101, where it serves as an access road to the park.

His car struck the tent in which 19-year-old Amanda Ciskowski of San Diego and 18-year-old Graham Grubb of Dana Point were sleeping, and dragged them about 35 feet before stopping.

Freels then abandoned the car, went to a nearby pay phone and called a taxi to take him home. He was arrested there a few hours later.

Freels’ guilty plea came on the day his trial on the teen-agers’ deaths was scheduled to start.