A Life Taken, a Life in the Balance

A driver allegedly drunk and running red lights as he sped his pregnant wife to the hospital early Christmas morning smashed his station wagon into a car driven by a woman on her way home from a holiday dinner and killed her, police said.

Roberto Perez’s 1979 Chevrolet station wagon, its emergency lights flashing, was speeding along Victory Boulevard in Van Nuys at about 60 mph when, police say, he plowed into the driver’s side door of Michelle Pagan’s car at Van Nuys and Victory boulevards at 3:15 a.m.

Pagan, 26, who was returning to her Woodland Hills home in her Honda Civic after a Christmas Eve dinner at a friend’s house, probably never saw Perez coming. She died at the scene. Sandra Perez suffered minor injuries in the crash. Roberto Perez was unhurt.

“The fact that he was drunk is really upsetting,” said Alvin Pagan, one of Michelle Pagan’s four brothers. “And the fact that he’s still alive.”

Officers at the crash scene smelled alcohol on Perez’s breath and said he appeared intoxicated. Perez, 26, was booked into Van Nuys Jail on suspicion of murder. His bail was set at $1 million.

Paramedics took Perez’s wife to Northridge Hospital Medical Center, where she gave birth to a healthy baby Christmas morning, said Los Angeles Police Officer Gary Lewis.

It was unclear how close Sandra Perez had been to giving birth at the time of the accident. “The information that we got is that birth was not imminent,” said Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Bob Collis.

Police said Roberto Perez, of Sun Valley, was intentionally running red lights to get his wife to the hospital delivery room. “He had his emergency flashers on; he knew what he was doing,” said LAPD Valley Traffic Division Officer Joanna Needham.

“He had been driving like that for some time, according to witnesses,” she said. “He nearly hit two other people.”

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Officials at the Northridge hospital where police said the baby was born refused to discuss the case. It was unclear what time the child was born.

Sandra Perez’s mother, Rosa Salazar, who was also in the car, suffered minor injuries in the crash.

Late Christmas morning, Pagan’s siblings were still benumbed, speaking of their younger sister in the present tense.

“She is always smiling,” said Alvin. “You always see her big teeth just like mine.”

Rather than having the Christmas celebration they had planned, Pagan’s siblings spent the day making arrangements for her parents, a cousin and a brother to fly in for services for their sister.

Although she had intended to spend the night at her friend’s house, in the early hours she decided to drive home.

Her brothers say she probably wanted to finish getting her 5-year-old nephew’s presents ready. She had planned to spend Christmas afternoon with four siblings at her eldest brother’s house in Ventura, and she wouldn’t have had time to wrap gifts on Christmas morning: She had volunteered to work the morning shift at Blockbuster Video in Sherman Oaks--as she did most Christmases--so that others could have the day off, said her brother Alvin.

“That’s just the way she is. She’s a giving person,” he said. “She let other people spend Christmas with their families and she took up the slack.”

Michelle Pagan was a woman with a big heart and easy smile, her brother said. She was an assistant manager at the video store, and loved spending free time with her relatives--particularly her young nephew--and often planned family gatherings.

She was also a movie buff. The night she died, she took her brother Humberto and a couple of friends to a showing of “Titanic” in Woodland Hills. “She was crying through the whole thing,” Humberto said.

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After the movie, she dropped her brother off at the Woodland Hills home that they had bought four months earlier with their parents’ help, and went to the dinner.

When she told her friends that she was going home, they urged her to stay, Humberto said.

Instead, at the end of a long, happy night, Michelle Pagan got in her car and headed home. Before she drove away, she probably crossed herself. “She always does the sign of the cross when she gets in the car,” Humberto said. She also fastened her seat belt.

At 7 a.m., William Pagan, her oldest brother, got a call from the coroner’s office. He broke the news to the rest of the family.

Word of Pagan’s death spread quickly among her co-workers too. “Everybody knew her,” said one Blockbuster employee. “And everybody liked her.”