Head-On Crash Kills 8 Young People : Accident: All of the dead were apparently riding in one truck. Beer cans and bottles were found at the scene.

The bodies of eight young people were found early Saturday at a highway crash scene strewn with beer cans and bottles, the California Highway Patrol reported.

The victims’ ages ranged from 15 to 21. All had been in the same vehicle, according to CHP Officer Jim Neeley, who investigated the head-on collision of two small pickup trucks.

“There were numerous bottles and cans of beer strewn about the scene, but at this point we don’t know if the drivers had been drinking just prior to the accident,” Neeley added. “It was such a devastating scene. . . . You start looking at kids that age and you see how young they really are. It makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck.”

Those killed were identified by the Contra Costa coroner’s office as Jonolle Karasch, 15, of Oakley; Cori Gordilla, 16, of Antioch; Nathan Allen, 19, hometown unknown; Mario Raphael (Ralph) Hernandez, 17, of Brentwood; Christina Locke, 20, of Oakley; James Fields, 18, of Bethel Island; Eric Vierra, 20, of Oakley, and Bryan Sherman, 21, of Oakley.

“Six of the victims were ejected from the truck and two were partially ejected,” Neeley said. Authorities believe that at least five were riding in the bed of the truck, a red Toyota with no roof on the passenger compartment.

Two young men in the second truck, a black Toyota, were reported in stable condition Saturday afternoon at John Muir Hospital in Walnut Creek. The identity of the driver, who was 17, was not released because of his age. The other man was James Brockman, 23, of Lafayette.

The red truck was traveling about 60 m.p.h., the black truck about 55 m.p.h., Neeley said, and the victims’ bodies were found up to 30 feet from their vehicle.

The eight people were pronounced dead at the scene, a two-lane section of California 4 in farmland about three miles southwest of Discovery Bay and about 40 miles east of San Francisco. The collision occurred about 2:15 a.m., and the highway was closed for five hours after the wreck.

The traffic accident was the deadliest in Contra Costa County since 1976, when 28 students and a teacher died as a school bus carrying a Yuba City High School choir group plunged off a freeway embankment in Martinez.