CHP Says Crash Victims Didn’t Use Seat Belts

Some of the five members of a family who were killed when their auto ran a stop sign in the Antelope Valley and crashed into another car may have died because they were not wearing seat belts, a California Highway Patrol officer said Thursday.

The driver of the other auto, who was wearing his seat belt, suffered only a broken ankle.

The Los Angeles county coroner’s office identified the five dead as four members of the Munoz family of the remote Hi Vista area east of Lancaster--father Jose, 42; mother Clelia, 39; daughters Patricia, 16, and Evelyn, 4--and Nancy Solorzano, a 9-year-old cousin.

Also injured in the crash were the only other Munoz children, Marcia, 14, and Kevin, 6, said coroner’s investigator Robert Fierro.

The family was driving to Lancaster for a relative’s wedding rehearsal. Their car ran a stop sign at a remote intersection about 4:35 p.m. Wednesday and was broadsided by another car driven by Clement King, 56, of Lancaster, a civilian Air Force employee on his way home from work at nearby Edwards Air Force Base.

King, hospitalized in fair condition Thursday with a fractured ankle, said he was wearing his seat belt as always Wednesday. But of the victims in the Munoz car, CHP Officer Mike Nemback said, “When they hit, everybody in that car was still going 60 m.p.h.”

CHP officers said the five killed matched the death toll of the worst Antelope Valley traffic accident in memory, a 1991 two-car crash that killed four members of one family and the driver of a second car.

CHP officers said the Munoz car was traveling west about 60 m.p.h. on Avenue E when, after going through the stop sign, it was hit by King’s car, which had the right of way southbound on 120th Street East.

None of the people in the Munoz car was wearing seat belts. According to Nemback, seat belts might not have made any difference for people on the passenger side of the Munoz car, which was caved in by King’s car. But seat belts might have protected the people on the driver’s side.

In particular, the father who was driving the family’s 1985 Dodge Turbo four-door sedan was thrown partly out of the car by the impact and ended up partially wedged beneath it when it rolled over onto its roof, Nemback said.

The two surviving Munoz children were recovering from fractures and internal injuries at Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills. The son was listed in serious condition and the daughter in stable condition, a hospital spokeswoman said.

The first rescue units at the crash were 17 firefighters, police and hospital personnel from Edwards, a base spokesman said. Staff Sgt. Mark Roberts, a base patrolman, recalled Thursday how he had to crawl into the Dodge three times to pull out three dead females before he could reach the surviving daughter.

“I just squeezed in and got ahold of them and got them out,” said Roberts, 35. Another airman used his hand to plug a leak in the car’s gas tank while the other rescuers worked. Roberts recalled the one dazed surviving girl at the scene telling him repeatedly, “I’m gonna die.”