2 Die, 3 Hurt in High-Speed Crash : Tragedy: Witnesses say car carrying four Fountain Valley 16-year-olds was traveling close to 100 m.p.h. Passenger was trying to get to driver’s education school.

A teen-ager on his way to driving school was one of two Fountain Valley High School students killed Tuesday when the car in which they were riding smashed into another car, hit a tree and skidded into a telephone pole.

The dead youths, Gregory Starr and Mike Mize, were in the back seat of a Mustang driven by Brian Dale Tuseth, who had gotten his driver’s license less than seven months ago.

Friends said Tuseth was speeding along residential Ellis Avenue trying to get Mize to a driver’s education class on time.

Tuseth was taken to Western Medical Center in Santa Ana with moderate injuries, authorities said. A fourth passenger, Lisa Nielsen, who was riding in the front seat, was taken to UC Irvine Medical Center with minor injuries.

The Mustang hit a Nissan Sentra making a left turn from Ellis onto Linden Street. That driver, Adelle M. Park, 52, of Fountain Valley, suffered moderate injuries, authorities said. She also was taken to Western Medical Center.

The four 16-year-olds in the Mustang all lived in Fountain Valley and were juniors at Fountain Valley High, school officials said.

“There’s going to be an upset campus here,” Assistant Principal Tom Antal said. “These are neat kids. It’s going to really be hard for the school.”

Antal described Starr and Mize as “outgoing and friendly students. They were definitely contributors to the school, very much a part of the life of the school. They will be missed.”

Police would only say that the Mustang’s excessive speed was the primary cause of the accident. Witnesses estimated that the car was traveling at least 100 m.p.h. along Ellis about half a mile from the high school.

Patty Briggs, 30, of Fountain Valley was waiting to turn right from Linden onto Ellis when she saw the accident. After the crash, she dialed 911 from her car telephone.

“I knew someone was dead,” she said. “There was no possibility that everyone could live through that.”

Mangled pieces of the Mustang lay all over the street after the crash. A twisted license plate attached to a piece of the Mustang’s trunk was 10 to 20 feet from the car. There was a five-foot-wide gap in a cinder-block wall that the car had smashed into.