Man Charged With Murder in Car Chase : High-speed pursuits: He is the fourth person in the county since 1981 to face such a trial in an alcohol-related road death.

A suspected drunk driver was charged with second-degree murder Wednesday in the death of a Bakersfield teen-ager during a high-speed chase last weekend.

Antonio De La Cruz Morales, 21, of Ventura is being held on $1-million bail in the Ventura County Jail. During a brief appearance Wednesday in Ventura County Municipal Court, he was assigned a public defender and his arraignment was postponed until Dec. 2.

Morales is the fourth person to be charged with murder in an alcohol-related crash in Ventura County since a 1981 state Supreme Court ruling permitted such charges. None of the other cases resulted in a murder conviction, although in one of them prosecutors are appealing for a retrial.

Morales was arrested after he crashed his pickup truck into the rear of a van just before midnight Friday on California 126 between Ventura and Santa Paula, the California Highway Patrol said. The crash occurred as CHP officers were chasing the suspect at speeds exceeding 100 m.p.h., investigators said.

Victoria Lee Gonzales, 16, sleeping in the back of the van, was thrown onto the pavement and run over by another vehicle, possibly Morales’ truck, investigators said. She died shortly afterward.

Morales and his passenger suffered only scrapes.

A junior at Bakersfield High School, Gonzales was one of three people in Southern California who died last weekend in crashes that occurred as a result of high-speed police chases. In a two-week period, 10 people have been killed during such chases, all but two of them innocent bystanders.

The deaths have raised concerns about police training and procedures for high-speed chases. But in the Morales case, the CHP officers acted prudently, Ventura County Deputy Dist. Atty. Donald C. Glynn said.

“They backed off in hopes that he would slow down, and he didn’t,” Glynn said.

About 20 minutes before the crash, Morales had been thrown out of a downtown Ventura bar after he tried to get on stage with the band, Glynn said. Almost as soon as Morales steered the white pickup onto the southbound Ventura Freeway, CHP officers noticed him speeding and driving erratically and they began following him, the prosecutor said.

Morales was clocked at about 85 m.p.h. and veered onto the shoulder and into the median area “many, many times,” Glynn said. But he said the officers did not immediately turn on their flashing lights to stop him because traffic was heavy and they were afraid the driver would attempt to flee.

After about four miles, Glynn said, Morales turned onto eastbound California 126. The road had less traffic, so the officers turned on their flashers, he said.

Instead of stopping, the driver accelerated to speeds exceeding 100 m.p.h. on the four-lane road, Glynn said, and had “innumerable close calls with other vehicles.” The officers “became convinced he would not stop” and turned their lights on again, he said.

After driving about five miles on California 126, Morales abruptly switched lanes around Briggs Road and clipped the left rear fender of the van, causing both vehicles to skid off the road, Glynn said.

CHP investigator Steve Halbleib said tests have tentatively shown Morales’ blood alcohol level to be .14%. The legal limit is .08%. Glynn said Morales had been convicted of drunk driving in April and was on probation.

The CHP is trying to locate motorists who may have seen the speeding car, Halbleib said. He asked witnesses to call the agency at 654-4571.

Morales has not been charged with drunk driving in Friday’s crash, but Glynn said evidence of intoxication will be presented to show his state of mind.

“It was totally outrageous driving,” Glynn said. “I think we clearly have implied malice in this case.”

Malice is one of the necessary elements to sustain a murder conviction. Under the law, malice is implied if a person knowingly commits an act that is dangerous to human life and consciously disregards the danger.

Ventura County prosecutors first sought a drunk-driving murder conviction in 1986, when Sammy H. Menchaca of Simi Valley was accused of killing two people in a head-on crash on Pleasant Valley Road. The jury convicted him of the lesser charge of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence, and he was sentenced to 11 years in prison.

In early 1989, prosecutors originally charged Jo Guadalupe Torres of Oxnard with murder in the drunk-driving death of a Santa Barbara truck driver. But they later reduced the charge to vehicular manslaughter after deciding there was insufficient evidence for a murder conviction.

Later that year, in one of the most publicized cases in the county’s history, Diane Mannes of Somis was charged with murder in the drunk-driving deaths of three young men on the Conejo Grade.

The jury convicted Mannes of causing injury to two youths who survived, but the panel deadlocked on the murder charge, with seven of the 12 members favoring conviction. Prosecutors are now appealing in the U.S. Supreme Court for the right to retry Mannes for murder.

As in the Mannes case, the district attorney’s office filed the murder charge against Morales in a way that will not allow a jury to find him guilty of a lesser crime, such as manslaughter.

“We don’t want to give the jury an opportunity for compromise,” said Glynn, who also prosecuted Mannes.

John V. Paventi, who prosecuted Menchaca, said some jurors have difficulty viewing drunk driving as murder.

“They think a murderer goes out and shoots somebody or stabs somebody to death,” said Paventi, who is now a Municipal Court commissioner. “They don’t seem to comprehend that drunk driving with a 4,000-pound automobile is just as lethal as a gun with a bullet in it.”