5-Car Crash Injures 10; 2 O.C. Students Critical : Accident: Worst hurt are trapped in wreckage for more than an hour. Rescuers are amazed that everyone survived.

By KEN ELLINGWOOD

Oct. 12, 1994 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

MISSION VIEJO —

A car full of six Capistrano Valley High School students careened out of control Tuesday morning, collided with oncoming traffic, flew into the air and flipped over, trapping three of the youths inside.

Firefighters worked for more than an hour to extricate the pinned students, freeing one girl by cutting her hair. Two passing firefighters and a nurse headed to work managed to free the remaining teen-agers and tend to other hurt motorists. In all, 10 people were injured; two of the three trapped students are in critical condition and the other is in serious but stable condition.

The intersection of Marguerite Parkway and Estanciero was turned into a chaotic scrap heap of strewn debris and broken glass from five cars damaged in the crash. Veteran emergency workers expressed amazement that no one was killed.

“I’ve never seen a crash of this magnitude,” said firefighter Nolan Osborn, who found the wheels of the overturned Toyota still spinning when he happened upon the scene. “Everywhere I looked, there were (wrecked) cars. I was stunned.”

It was the second major South County accident in recent months involving a group of high school students. In late August, four El Toro High School cross-country runners were injured in a collision that occurred as the athletes were driving back to campus after a midmorning trip for fast food.

Investigators had not determined the cause of the 7:30 a.m. Mission Viejo crash, but witnesses told police the car carrying the students was weaving in and out of traffic and appeared to be traveling at least 70 m.p.h. when it sideswiped another car and lost control as the six students headed to school, said Sheriff’s Lt. Dan Martini. The speed limit at the intersection where the crash took place is 40 m.p.h.

“The possibility of excessive speed is being looked at,” said Sheriff’s Sgt. Fred Lisanti. Investigators also said the driver appeared to be the only person in the students’ car with his seat belt fastened.

The car hurtled though the intersection before it struck a stopped Ford Explorer head on, Lisanti said. The impact propelled the Toyota at least three feet in the air and into another oncoming car before it came to rest on its roof in front of a fast-food restaurant. The Explorer was driven backward into a car halted behind it, injuring a teacher on her way to work at Mission Viejo High School.

“I looked up in my rearview mirror. All I saw was the car up in the air and spinning around,” said Troy Marshall, a 26-year-old Lake Forest resident who was one of the first to reach the injured students. “It all went boom !”

Marshall, a water-treatment plant worker with first-aid training, was joined by a handful of others who took pulses and calmed wailing victims during the minutes before the first paramedic crew arrived.

Two Mission Viejo-based firefighters on their way to work wriggled into the crumpled Toyota to gauge the injuries of the three teens trapped inside, while the passing nurse tended to a woman and her 4-year-old daughter, who sustained minor injuries as they waited at a stoplight in the Explorer.

The driver of the car full of teens, 18-year-old Kenneth Wong of Mission Viejo, was the last to be pried from the wreckage. He was airlifted to Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center with injuries that included a concussion and broken arms and legs and is in critical condition.

A nurse who treated him said Tuesday afternoon that Wong was awake but had “no idea” how the crash occurred. “He doesn’t remember,” said Connie Stalcup, trauma coordinator at Mission.

Wong and two other students were hospitalized at Mission and its affiliated Children’s Hospital. Linda Chang, 15, sustained head injuries and cuts and is in serious but stable condition, and Sroothi Jaikumar, 14, suffered broken bones and cuts and is in critical condition.

Three other students--Jade Gjestland, 15; Kristi Kaewmane, 16; and Lewis Chow, 16, all of Mission Viejo--were treated and released from Children’s Hospital of Orange County in Orange.

Firefighters worked for more than an hour to extricate the three trapped students, freeing one girl by cutting her hair, which was caught in the wreckage.

The injured students included two pairs of cousins and a sophomore homecoming queen nominee whose parents thought she was riding to school with someone else.

Fearing the possibility of a car accident someday, Jaikumar’s father, V. Jay Vadivelu, said he had scolded her two weeks ago for refusing to ride the bus. Vadivelu said he allowed his daughter to ride to school twice a week with a friend so she could take swimming lessons. But she was not in that car Tuesday, Vadivelu said.

“When the phone rang, I said, ‘Damn, I knew it was going to come,’ ” Vadivelu said outside his daughter’s room in the pediatric intensive care unit.

Four other injured motorists and their passengers were taken to Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills with injuries that authorities said were not serious. Those treated and released from Saddleback were: Cathay Vincent, 39, and her 4-year-old daughter, Kendra, of Rancho Santa Margarita; Alan Speckerman, 49, of San Juan Capistrano; and Sandra Busby, 54, of Coto de Caza. Two other people were uninjured, authorities said.

Times staff writer Martin Miller contributed to this report.

Critical Smashup

A Tuesday morning crash in Mission Viejo that injured 10 people occurred when a car carrying six Capistrano Valley High School students hit three other cars. How it happened:

1) To avoid hitting car in its lane, white Toyota swerves, broadsides Honda

2) White Toyota loses control, strikes Ford; impact pushes Ford into gray Toyota

3) White Toyota becomes airborne, lands on hood of approaching Lincoln

4) White Toyota lands on its roof

White Toyota (all six occupants injured)

Car headed south, driver unaware of oncoming Toyota

Honda (one uninjured occupant)

Ford (both occupants injured)

Gray Toyota (one occupant injured)

Lincoln (two occupants, one injured)

Marguerite Parkway

Estanciero Drive