5 Deaths Jolt Antelope Valley

Two of them were in love and had just started to talk about marriage. One enjoyed playing basketball and shooting pool and was about to join the Air Force. Another had already enlisted in the Navy. And another, a bit older than his friends, left four siblings behind, including a younger brother who was with him when he died.

These were the five young people killed Thursday in what authorities said was apparently a 100-mph race through traffic on the Antelope Valley Freeway.

They were friends headed south for some spring break fun “down below,” as some folks in the Antelope Valley refer to the vast expanse of Los Angeles across the mountains.

Tragedy struck when 17-year-old Vanessa Yusi lost control of her black Acura Legend and the car flew off the freeway, rolling several times before it came to rest at the bottom of a 75-foot embankment. Witnesses said the driver appeared to have been in a race with three other cars. But relatives and friends of the dead challenged that assertion Friday.

Killed in the accident were John Batas, 18; John Chu, 25; Shaun Perez, 20; and Jovannie Solano, also 20. The four young men died immediately, three of them flung from the car as it rolled down the hill. Yusi was airlifted to a nearby hospital, where she died hours later after surgery.

Four were from Palmdale and one was from Lancaster. By Friday morning, news of the deaths had spread around the valley.

Veane Jones stood in her driveway, tears streaming down her face, as a neighbor embraced her.

Jones is Shaun Perez’s mother. For her, the loss was double. Perez and Yusi were dating, and the families of both said the two intended to marry after she graduated in June.

Both worked at the Antelope Valley Mall, he in a kiosk called the Piercing Pagoda, she in a women’s accessory store.

Jones said her son had just landed a second job at Magic Mountain and was to begin work there next week. She said the couple planned to move into a house that Yusi was due to inherit from a relative on her graduation from high school.

“If I could choose a daughter-in-law, Vanessa would be the one,” Jones said. “They were perfect together.”

They planned to attend college after their marriage.

“She was just one of those people who was always cool with everybody,” said Kevin Morris, a junior at Palmdale’s Highland High School who took Yusi to the prom last year.

He said the two were just friends who decided to go with each other because neither had a date.

“She was somebody you could just kick it with,” Morris said. “She was just a good person. It’s sad.”

Several other students described her the same way.

A co-worker of Perez at the Piercing Pagoda said the store’s corporate officials had instructed her not to talk about the young man’s death.

She then burst into tears.

Lorne Bebault, Jovannie Solano’s mother, sat at her dining room table Friday with a box of tissues, wiping away tears.

She said her son graduated from Highland High School last year and moved to Pomona, where he worked in a shoe factory.

“I really missed him because we’d take turns cooking. I taught him how, but he’s better than me,” she said.

Bebault said her son had enlisted in the Navy. She said he planned to receive training as a dental assistant and then attend college to become a dentist when he got out of the service.

“He was very sensible,” she said. “He had a very bright future.”

Vicente Batas felt the same way about his son, John, 18.

Batas said John was respectful and did his chores around the house without complaining. He planned to join the Air Force when he finished school in June.

“He was a good son,” Batas said.

Relatives of John Chu, the oldest in the group, were too distraught to speak with reporters.

Chu left behind four siblings, including a younger brother, Tim, who was in one of the other cars that witnesses said were racing with Yusi’s.

But friends and family of all those killed denied that there was a race. Most acknowledged that Yusi may have been driving over the speed limit in an attempt to catch up with the others, but they said there was no organized race.

The accident happened, they insisted, when a white sports utility vehicle suddenly cut off her Acura, forcing her to make an evasive maneuver.

“Not at all possible,” said Doug Sweeney, spokesman for the California Highway Patrol, which has launched a criminal investigation into the accident that could result in felony charges against the drivers of other cars involved.

Sweeney said independent witnesses said Yusi’s Acura made an unsafe lane change and went out of control in front of the white sport utility vehicle, and therefore could not have been cut off by it. He said the investigation will take at least a month.

At the site of the crash Friday, more than a dozen friends of the dead gathered to mourn. Some brought flowers. Others picked through the debris for mementos of their friends.

Whether or not the victims were racing, said Alicia Menendez, mother of one of the mourners, there is a lesson to be learned.

“I think that what these kids should learn is that they shouldn’t take life for granted,” she said, her 19-year-old daughter at her side. “Sometimes they think they are invincible.”

Times staff writers Ron Weaver and Kristina Sauerwein contributed to this story.