O.C. Girl Dies, 2 Injured as Car Sails Into House

A speeding car carrying three Troy High School teen-agers went out of control Friday morning and plunged off hilly Skyline Drive into the side of a house, killing one 17-year-old girl and seriously injuring the two other students.

The 1979 Camaro sped past frantic road workers at around 9 a.m. at an estimated 70 m.p.h., then flew some 70 feet and leaped over an outdoor swimming pool. It crashed, upside down, into a bedroom in the side of an upscale, ranch-style home at 2240 Skyline Drive--the same house that had been hit by an out-of-control car 13 years ago.

A resident of the house, sleeping in an adjacent bedroom, escaped injury. She was the only one home at the time, officials said.

The dead girl was identified as Megan Glover of Yorba Linda. She and her brother, Joshua, 14, were passengers in a car driven by Courtney Droke, a 16-year-old girl from Fullerton. Megan Glover was pronounced dead at St. Jude Hospital and Rehabilitation Center here.

Joshua Glover and Droke were taken to UCI Medical Center; a spokeswoman said Joshua Glover was in critical condition with head injuries and a possible spine fracture. Droke was in serious condition with head injuries and scrapes and bruises, hospital spokeswoman Fran Tardiff said.

The car was traveling west--away from Troy High--at the time of the morning accident, police said. Among unanswered questions were whether the students had been at school already that morning and why they were not in class. School officials and relatives of the victims declined comment.

The crash occurred as the car was roaring down narrow, twisting Skyline Drive at an estimated 70 m.p.h., police said. Only minutes before the accident, city street-repair workers waved futilely at the speeding car in an attempt to slow it down. As the car roared by the street workers, one of the teen-agers yelled “Wahoo!” according to witnesses.

Police said the car went of control near the intersection of Skyline Drive and Sorrento Place on a downhill grade. It struck a dirt embankment on the right side of Skyline and veered left across the road, tearing through a metal guardrail at the corner.

The car then flew into the air, sailing over the back yard and swimming pool at 2240 Skyline Drive before plunging upside down into the bedroom wall of the house.

The crash site resembled a bombed-out war scene. Inside the bedroom, the car lay covered with debris, splintered furniture and tree limbs. The crash sheared off a natural gas line in the house, and firefighters were forced to work slowly for fear of a possible fire or explosion.

“It took us about 45 minutes to extricate the victims,” said Fullerton Fire Battalion Chief Larry Greene. “The rubble was so bad we had to remove it from the car before we could use the Jaws of Life,” an hydraulic device used to pry apart wreckage to free victims, he added.

There was no indication that alcohol was involved in the mishap, authorities said.

Fullerton Firefighter Ed Casey was one of the first emergency crewmen on the scene. He and paramedics tried to console Joshua and Droke while the crew frantically tore at the twisted metal.

“We hated to see them (trapped and injured in the car),” Casey related. “One of the victims was unconscious, and the other two were mumbling incoherently. We tried to calm them down.”

The unconscious victim apparently was Megan Glover, who died shortly after being freed from the smashed car. Before being airlifted, several paramedics feverishly worked to keep her alive by using cardiopulmonary resuscitation while shocked residents stood nearby and watched.

Police found a Troy High School yearbook in the car, Fullerton Police Sgt. Steve Matson said. Officers later went to the school, located across the street from Cal State Fullerton, and verified that the three teen-agers were students there.

At Troy High, news traveled fast among students about the fate of their classmates. “After fifth period, a lot of people gathered in the quad, and word spread quickly,” one student said.

By lunch hour, several carloads of curious students drove to the accident scene but were quickly turned back by police.

On a somber Friday afternoon, students spoke sadly about the tragedy. One high school girl who said she knew Megan Glover spoke of the dead girl in the present tense, as if unable to accept the fact that she had died.

“She (Megan) is totally nice,” said the girl, who did not want to be identified. “She’s a very nice person and talks to everyone.”

City street workers said Friday that they had attempted to slow down the speeding car shortly before the accident. Repair crews were working on Ladera Vista Drive, a street that flows into Skyline Drive. City workman Byron Sanders said the car had sped down Ladera Vista Drive, even though one lane was closed for repairs.

“I gave them (the teen-agers in the car) the caution sign and pointed to make them know we were working here, and they didn’t too much care about it,” Sanders said.

Minutes later, Sanders said, he and other workers heard the sound of sirens responding to the accident nearby. “We knew immediately it was them,” Sanders said.

The owners of the house involved in the crash are Joe and Joanne Campanella, a couple who also survived the MGM Grand fire in Las Vegas a decade ago.

On Friday, Joanne Campanella was sleeping in an adjoining bedroom when the accident occurred and escaped harm, Matson said. She and her husband declined to discuss the accident.

Their house at 2240 Skyline Drive is about 15 feet below the street surface. Police said that in 1978, another car had plunged into the same bedroom. Details of the earlier accident were not immediately available.

But Fullerton Firefighter Tom Samoff said Friday that in responding to the accident site, he felt as if history was repeating itself. Thirteen years before, he said, he had come to the same house when a car plunged into the bedroom.

“It (the 1978 crashed car) was just a little bit over to the right, but in the same place,” Samoff said. “It’s amazing.”

Skyline Drive is an affluent residential area in the hills of northeastern Fullerton. The accident site is about two miles from Troy High.

Fullerton Traffic Engineer Paul Smith said he had reviewed an accident-location map of the city on Friday and found no unusual rate of accidents on the street.

Nonetheless, neighbors around the accident scene on Friday expressed outrage and maintained that Skyline Drive has become a dangerous street, with frequent accidents, largely because young people like to speed through the area.

“The kids tear up and down the street,” one neighbor charged on Friday. “And it’s terrible at night.”

Another resident said: “It always takes so many accidents before the city will do anything.”

And a third neighbor added with disgust: “The kids around here drive (Skyline) like a grand prix course.”

Times staff writer Thuan Le contributed to this report.

Fullerton Car Crash

One teen-ager was killed and two others seriously injured when a driver lost control of her sports car while speeding along a narrow, hilly Fullerton road. According to police and witnesses, the tragedy unfolded this way: 1. The driver swerves at high speed around a city work crew blocking one lane of narrow Skyline Drive. Workers hear a shout of “Wahoo!” from inside the vehicle as the car accelerates away. 2. While traveling an estimated 70 m.p.h. in the proper lane, the driver loses control and heads off the road, continuing a short distance along a sloping shoulder covered with dirt and plants. 3. The car veers back onto the road, then heads toward the street corner. 4. The car then hits a curb and plunges through a guardrail and into the air, over the slope below. 5. Carrying the guardrail with it, the car flips and flies about 70 feet through the air and over a swimming pool before crashing through a house’s bedroom wall. A resident, sleeping in an adjacent bedroom, is not hurt. But the impact shears off the home’s gas line.

Source: Fullerton Police Department; Witnesses Accounts