Head-On Crash Kills Man, Injures 4 Teens
A 26-year-old Thousand Oaks man died this weekend when he slammed his white 1989 Chevrolet Beretta head-on into another car while driving the wrong way on the Ventura Freeway.
The driver, Darrin Thomas Deveau, drove the wrong way in the fast lane of the northbound Ventura Freeway for about a mile before hitting a Volvo containing four youths who were heading home from a football game. The crash occurred between the Moorpark Road overpass and the Moorpark Freeway interchange about 11:30 p.m. Saturday, authorities said.
Deveau was killed instantly.
The four teens, two boys and a girl from Camarillo and another boy from Agoura Hills, were taken to Columbia Los Robles Hospital and St. John’s Pleasant Valley Hospital with major to moderate injuries.
Two of the crash victims in the Volvo, whose names were withheld because of their ages, had to be pried from the twisted wreckage, authorities said.
California Highway Patrol investigators were unable to determine the speed of the vehicles at the time of impact. However, authorities confirmed witnesses’ accounts that Deveau got off the freeway at Lynn Road before merging back onto the roadway in the wrong direction.
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