Missing Family of 4 Found Dead at Remote Crash Site

A Highland Park family of four, reported missing since Thanksgiving, was found dead Tuesday by a sheriff’s search and rescue team, which came upon the family’s crushed pickup truck in a snowy ravine about 350 feet from a highway in Angeles National Forest.

Two family members were found dead inside the blue 1989 Chevrolet pickup. A trail of footprints led to the other two bodies nearby. It was not clear how the truck ran off the narrow Angeles Crest Highway at an elevation of about 4,000 feet or what weather conditions the vehicle encountered.

A relative, Edgar Lechuga, 18, said Los Angeles police detectives confirmed to family members that the dead were Joseph Lechuga, 35; his wife, Dolores, 44, and their sons Joseph, 6, and Jeremy, 4.

Relatives filed a missing persons report with Los Angeles police after the family did not return to their home after spending Thanksgiving with relatives in Victorville. Relatives said Joseph Lechuga, a carpenter, was scheduled to work Nov. 29, the Saturday after the holiday.

“We’ve been looking for them ever since,” nephew Edgar Lechuga said. “I looked in Bakersfield, Mojave, everywhere. We don’t know what to say. We’re speechless.”

Sheriff’s spokeswoman Debra Glafkides said deputies were working through the night to recover and transport the bodies from the snowy crash site.

In addition to the LAPD, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department had started its own search because it has jurisdiction over much of the territory between Victorville, located in the county’s High Desert, and eastern Los Angeles County.

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Acting on a tip, which included the family’s license plate number, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s helicopter spotted the truck in a snowy ravine off Angeles Crest Highway at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, about five miles east of California 39. The air unit was able to confirm that the vehicle--upside down and badly damaged--was that of the Lechugas.

Authorities described the area where the pickup was found as extremely treacherous, particularly because the highway in that area is narrow. That portion of the highway from California 39 to Wrightwood in San Bernardino County had been closed for several days because of the snow from recent El Nino-influenced storms that swept through the Southland, Glafkides said.

Relatives were unable to say for sure why the family didn’t take the quicker Interstates 10 and 15 home from Victorville. Those highways are the commonly used route from the High Desert to Los Angeles.

“Maybe he wanted the kids to see the snow and it was just to try something different,” the nephew said.