1 Teen Dies, 5 Injured When Car Slams Into Rocks Near Beach

A 16-year-old Ventura boy died Tuesday afternoon and his brother and four of their friends were injured when the car they were riding in veered off the road near Emma Wood State Beach and slammed into a rock embankment.

Jason Sawdey, 16, died of his injuries. His brother, Matt, 14, sustained critical injuries. The other victims were driver Patty Daniels, 16; Nicole Kintz, 16; her brother, Ryan Kintz, 14; and Rick Nielsen, 13.

It was the second fatal accident on a Ventura County highway in two days, officials said. On Monday, J.B. Reeves, a 54-year-old auto maintenance supervisor from Ojai, died after being sideswiped on his way to work by another commuter on the Ventura Freeway.

Witnesses said the small two-door Toyota Tercel carrying six friends on a beach trip careened off the road about 1:15 p.m. after someone inside the car grabbed the wheel.

One of the passengers grabbed the wheel from Patty as she was passing another car on the two-lane road, California Highway Patrol OfficerDave Cockrill said.

“It appears that they were traveling at a high rate of speed when [someone] grabbed the wheel,” Cockrill said. Patty wrestled the wheel back, then lost control of the vehicle, which careened across the southbound lanes and into the rock and a parked delivery truck, Cockrill said.

“I was headed southbound and I saw the whole thing happen,” said Suzie Bensen, a 35-year-old Ventura manicurist who was on her lunch break.

Two girls were in the front and four boys in the back of the two-door hatchback.

“It was just crammed with kids and it looked like one of them reached over and grabbed the wheel and the car just swerved in front of me across the road and right into the rocks without even braking,” Bensen said.

Other witnesses confirmed Bensen’s account, and the injured driver told paramedics that someone had grabbed the wheel.

After the accident, Bensen stopped her car and ran to the Toyota, which was between the embankment and the parked Federal Express delivery truck.

Jason, who was sitting in the right back passenger seat, seemed to take the brunt of the impact, according to Bensen.

She said Jason was unconscious when she got to the vehicle.

“He wasn’t dead, but he was slipping away fast,” she said.

The others were moaning and pleading for help, she said.

The delivery truck’s driver, Mark Blevins, 40, said he had been asleep on a break in the back of his cab.

“It woke me up,” Blevins said. “When I got out, [Bensen] told me to call 911 on my cell phone.”

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Bystanders next converged on the mangled car and began to help the youngsters out.

As gasoline from the car spilled onto the road, the group of beachgoers in bathing suits and shorts, and an emergency-room nurse who had been on a 100-mile bike ride, pulled boogey boards, towels and a cooler from the car and then helped pull four of the injured out of the car.

The girls, who were in the front seat, were pinned against the dashboard.

Blevins said Nicole was having difficulty breathing, so he and another man cut her seatbelt to relieve the pressure on her chest.

Chris Roberts, a 33-year-old worker for Quest Com Communications, stopped his truck and tried to help.

“They had a few of them out by then. We were trying to reach the boy in the back, but when I felt for a pulse . . . he was gone,” said a shaken Roberts. “There wasn’t anything I could do.”

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At that point, Matt Sawdey didn’t know his brother was dead, family members said later.

On the street, emergency-room nurse Kaeren Embrey, 36, of Century City, started applying first aid.

“I tried to help the best I could,” Embrey said. “There really wasn’t anything we could do for the boy. Some poor mother is going to be heartbroken tonight.”

Dawn Proctor, 19, and some of her friends who had been at the beach tried to help pull out the boys in the back seat.

“They were moaning and one of my friends asked one of the guys to give him his hand, but he said, ‘I can’t, my arm’s broken,’ ” Proctor said.

When emergency personnel arrived, they began administering first aid to the victims, while firefighters started cutting off the roof of the car so that the two girls could be freed.

Jason’s body was placed on a gurney and covered with a yellow tarp.

California Highway Patrol officers closed the two-lane road, and a Ventura County Sheriff’s helicopter landed on the roadway.

Ventura County and Ventura city firefighters worked on the vehicle while paramedics, beach lifeguards and an off-duty doctor from Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura worked on the victims.

The helicopter took the three more-seriously injured boys to Ventura County Medical Center. After about 30 minutes of work, the two girls were pulled from the wreckage and taken by ambulance to Community Memorial Hospital.

At Ventura County Medical Center, family and friends of the youths gathered.

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Debbie and Tom Sawdey were inside watching over their surviving son, who had sustained a broken cervical bone and a dislocated eye socket. They decided they would wait to tell him about his brother’s death, said the boys’ grandmother Elizabeth Heck.

“It’s gonna be so hard,” said Heck, wiping tears from her face.

When Debbie Sawdey came out of the hospital for a moment, Heck asked about her surviving grandson.

“He just wants to know where his brother is,” Debbie Sawdey said in tears.

Of her dead son, Sawdey said, “He had such a big heart. He loved the water--any chance he’d get, he was out there. And, he loved his family.”

The trip was to be one last time up the coast to the beach with friends before school started, Sawdey said.

“Why Jason?” she sobbed, hugging family members.

At the hospital, Christine Kintz, mother of Ryan and Nicole, was assured by nurses that her children were going to be OK.

“They were just on their way to the beach when this happened,” Kintz said.

Ryan sustained a broken collarbone and Nicole a broken arm, she said.

With the help of his mother, Ryan was able to walk out of the hospital by 5 p.m. Nicole remained at Community Memorial Hospital and was listed in stable condition.

Michelle Daniels, 18, said her sister, Patty, was undergoing X-rays late Tuesday afternoon and had a deep cut on her lip.

CHP investigators are looking for the red or maroon sedan that Patty Daniels was passing when the accident occurred. Anyone with information on Tuesday’s accident is asked to call the CHP at 654-4571 Monday through Friday.

Correspondent Scott Steepleton also contributed to this story.