3 Die in Apparent Race on Freeway

Three recent members of the Sylmar High School marching band were killed Tuesday night when their car, sometimes traveling at speeds approaching 100 mph, swerved to avoid traffic during an apparent drag-race and flew 400 feet off the Foothill Freeway into a drainage ditch below, authorities said.

It was the second time in three days that a freeway drag-race had left three young people dead, and California Highway Patrol officers said they expect to charge surviving drivers in both wrecks with homicide. The CHP added, however, that the two accidents did not appear to signal any trend.

On Sunday, three passengers were thrown from a car and killed when the driver, who allegedly was drunk and racing another motorist, lost control and crashed on a downtown freeway interchange. Charges are pending against the driver, 22-year-old Martin Nunez, police said.

The most recent tragedy occurred on the eastbound Foothill Freeway, just past the transition from the Simi Valley Freeway in the northeastern San Fernando Valley. The 11 p.m. crash killed Sylmar High School’s 1996 drum major and two other former band members who had returned to the school almost daily since graduation to tutor band members.

“These kids were absolute winners,” said band director Raj Samaroo.

The dead were identified as honor students Michael Encinas and Pablo Rangel Jr., both 18, and Shannon Haupt, 20. Rangel, the drum major and one of the drivers, also played the trombone and was “an excellent musician and outstanding leader,” Samaroo said. Encinas played the bass drum, and Haupt, a 1995 graduate, played the cymbals.

Throughout the day, tearful band members clustered in the high school’s band room, talking to counselors and seeking solace from each other.

Friends and family members described the three as “good kids” who had been best friends since junior high school.

Authorities said they do not believe that drugs or alcohol played a role in the crash. But Officer Doug Sweeney of the CHP’s Newhall office said that because it appears that a speed contest was involved, officers expect to file three counts of second-degree murder against the other driver, 21-year-old Kenneth Acosta, also of Sylmar. His girlfriend was with him in the car. Neither was injured.

Acosta, a hemophiliac and diabetic, is being held at the Men’s Central Jail on suspicion of murder. He is devastated by the deaths of his friends, becoming tearful at the mention of their names during phone conversations with his family, his father said.

Acosta, an electrical engineering student, spent five days in the hospital last week with kidney problems, said his father, Dan. He had just gotten a new car.