6 Injured in Lake Forest Car Crash : Accident: Vehicle was being followed, but not chased, by Border Patrol, agency says. One passenger remains in critical condition.

Six people were injured, one of them critically, when a car that Border Patrol agents suspected was filled with illegal immigrants sped away, crashed into another car and then tumbled down a ravine in a back yard Saturday morning.

Border Patrol officials said they followed the car from a spot where day laborers gather to wait for work at Jeronimo Road and Cherry Avenue, through a residential neighborhood, and then north on Jeronimo Road, but lost sight of the vehicle when it ran a stop sign and a red light before crashing about 8:15 a.m.

Witnesses said the car was traveling about 80 m.p.h. when it crashed into a car driven by Edward Robert Haninger, 42, who was going to buy doughnuts, at the intersection of Jeronimo Road and Ridge Route Drive.

But Border Patrol officials, who in recent years have faced harsh criticism for chases that result in injuries or deaths, said they were not chasing the men in the car and that agents had not decided whether to pull the car over.

“It jumped the curb and went down the ravine,” Orange County Sheriff’s Lt. Larry Richey said. “This doesn’t happen very often.”

Jacinto Vhinto Hernandez Gonzalez, 20, the Laguna Hills resident who was driving the Plymouth, was treated at Saddleback Memorial Medical Center and then taken to Orange County Jail. He faces felony charges of reckless driving.

It was unclear Saturday evening whether any occupants of Hernandez Gonzalez’s car, in fact, crossed the border illegally--none of them had been arrested, Border Patrol Spokesman Steven Kean said.

Luis Antonio Ruiz Diaz, 22, of San Juan Capistrano, and Roberto Morales Sanchez and Rigoberto Nava, whose ages and residences were unknown, were all taken to Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo. Sanchez suffered multiple fractures and a head injury and was in critical condition pending surgery Saturday night, a hospital spokeswoman said. Nava was in stable condition after surgery for facial fractures, and Diaz was in stable condition as well, she added.

A fourth passenger, who was not identified, was in stable condition after undergoing surgery on his abdomen at Western Medical Center-Santa Ana, hospital spokeswoman Jan Inlow said.

Haninger, a structural engineer, had bruises all over his body, two broken ribs and a cut over his eye but was in stable condition at Western Medical Center.

“He’s doing good, he’s getting better. A little uncomfortable, but . . .,” said Jenny Haninger, 16, who visited her dad in the hospital Saturday afternoon. “He doesn’t remember anything right now.”

The incident began just after Border Patrol agents arrived in Lake Forest to look for illegal immigrants near the corner of Jeronimo Road and Cherry Avenue. On Friday, agents arrested 30 people in that neighborhood, Kean said.

On Saturday, an agent in a white van saw a group of men piling into a car and followed it, suspecting they were illegal immigrants, Kean said. The van followed the car around the neighborhood for a few minutes, until both cars turned left onto Jeronimo, Kean said.

Hernandez Gonzalez, the driver, ignored a stop sign at the intersection of Orange Avenue and Jeronimo Road, and ran a red light at the intersection of Jeronimo and El Toro roads moments before the crash, Richey said.

“They were trying to follow the vehicle to such a location where they could take a closer look to decide whether to stop the vehicle,” Kean said. “In most cases, we do not chase. An alternative to conducting a pursuit was to follow at a safe distance. (The agent) was simply following the vehicle.”

According to Kean, the Border Patrol van waited at the red light and arrived at the intersection of Ridge Route and Jeronimo after the collision had occurred. Three other Border Patrol vehicles were also on the scene within minutes because the agent in the van had notified them that he was following a car.

Sheriff’s investigators spent more than six hours trying to reconstruct the accident Saturday, but would not yet release any details.

There have been more than 20 people killed in Border Patrol-related chases since 1980 in California. Perhaps the most well-known incident occurred in Temecula in June, 1992, when a Chevrolet Suburban fleeing immigration authorities sped through a red light, killing four high school students and a local banker who were standing at the intersection.

Chases have long drawn criticism from community leaders in San Clemente, the Orange County city just north of the Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 5.

Since the Temecula crash, Kean said, the Border Patrol has instituted a new policy discouraging chases.

Dr. Tom Shaver, director of the trauma unit at Mission Hospital, where several of the accident victims were treated, blamed the Border Patrol for the men’s injuries.

“Their priorities are just out of line,” said Shaver, a constant critic of the agency. “How can they come into a community at a high speed, cause accidents, cause injuries to citizens, chasing five people when hundreds--maybe thousands--walk across the borders every day? You can’t be chasing people and jeopardizing the community with these kinds of chases.”

But Kean repeatedly said there was no chase, and that some injuries are inevitable considering the volume of investigations and arrests made by the Border Patrol.

“I can understand (people) being upset in any accident where people are injured, but I think they’re jumping to conclusions that the Border Patrol was chasing this vehicle,” Kean said. “We make 1,500 apprehensions a day. An injury occurs once every couple of months. That’s a pretty astounding record. It’s really rather minimal.