Wrong-Way Crash Kills 2 on Freeway : Collision: A woman suspected of driving drunk and the other driver die instantly. Two passengers are injured.

Two people were killed and two others injured when a suspected drunk driver drove onto the wrong side of the Orange Freeway early Tuesday and rammed into another car, the California Highway Patrol reported.

Kathern Hayes, 30, of La Verne, the wrong-way driver, was killed instantly, as was the driver of the other car, CHP Officer Mel Baker said.

Just before the 12:40 a.m. crash, according to Baker, a CHP unit had been sent to investigate a report of a bag of cement lying on the Orange Freeway just south of the Imperial Highway overpass.

As the officer neared that spot, he saw a car coming toward him, Baker said. Just as the officer grabbed the radio, Hayes’ Mercedes Benz sped past him, heading south toward Bastanchury Road.

The officer radioed for support and sped to an off-ramp to turn around. But before other units could be dispatched to try to stop northbound traffic, Hayes plowed into a Ford Thunderbird, which was traveling north at about 55 m.p.h., Baker said.

Just before the impact, the driver of the Ford apparently tried to swerve to the right to avoid a collision, Baker said, but he did not react in time.

“It just happened in a matter of moments,” Baker said.

The crash closed the freeway for more than an hour while emergency crews pulled the victims from the wreckage and investigators probed the scene.

Hayes’ Mercedes was equipped with an air bag, which inflated, Baker said, but added that she was not wearing a seat belt.

The driver of the Ford, tentatively identified as a 31-year-old man from Pomona, also died instantly. His identity was not immediately confirmed because he was not carrying a driver’s license or other identification, Baker said.

Two women in their early 20s, who were passengers in the Ford, suffered major head and body injuries, authorities said. Their identities also could not be confirmed.

One of the women was listed in critical condition at UCI Medical Center in Orange with severe head injuries and a fractured femur, hospital spokeswoman Fran Tardiff said.

The other woman was listed in serious condition at the same hospital with “blunt trauma to the body,” Tardiff said. “I don’t have a name on either one of them. There’s been no family to see them.”

The driver of the Thunderbird was wearing a seat belt, Baker said, but it was not known if the passengers were.

Investigators smelled alcohol on Hayes, Baker said, and a blood-alcohol test was administered by the Orange County coroner’s office. Test results were not immediately available.

It was not known how long Hayes had been driving the wrong way on the freeway, since the officer was the first to call in a report, Baker said. Within seconds of that call, however, dispatchers began receiving other calls.

CHP spokesman Sam Haynes said that stopping wrong-way drivers is one of the most difficult maneuvers for officers, who are taught at the academy not to chase them on the same side of the freeway, but to drive on the other side and flash their emergency lights, sound their horns or use their loudspeaker systems.

At the same time, other CHP units can be dispatched to areas in front of the wrong-way drivers to create a “traffic break,” stopping approaching traffic.

Wrong-way drivers accounted for 11 of the 231 fatal accidents that the CHP investigated in Orange County last year, Haynes said. One of the more notorious of those occurred on Dec. 1, when 23-year-old Faith Robinson drove south for several miles in the northbound lanes of the San Diego Freeway and slammed into a car, killing herself and an Irvine man.

Authorities later determined that Robinson, a Fountain Valley cocktail waitress, had a blood-alcohol level that was twice the legal limit. CHP officers were nearing completion of a traffic break when the accident occurred.

Three weeks later, a suspected drunk driver was spotted driving the wrong way on the Santa Ana Freeway. John Matthew Tafe, 36, of Riverside was stopped in his red Ford Truck after driving north about a mile in the southbound lanes.