Hit-and-Run Victim Might Have Survived

Saying that the victim of a bizarre hit-and-run accident may have been alive while he was jammed into the windshield of a car, driven 13 miles and dumped on a highway median, investigators said they will lobby today to have the driver charged with murder.

Isidro Calderon Hernandez, 26, a Buena Park welder, turned himself in Tuesday after an anonymous tip led Anaheim police to his white Honda Civic.

He is to be arraigned today on suspicion of striking bicyclist John Lee LaBord just before midnight Sunday, then leaving him dead or dying on an isolated stretch of Portola Parkway.

Whether LaBord died on impact or survived for part of the grisly drive could spell the difference between charging Hernandez with vehicular manslaughter or second-degree murder, authorities said. And, if he is convicted, it could mean a brief prison sentence or a life term.

“Whether he was alive or not after impact is of importance to the case,” said Mike Jacobs, the assistant district attorney who supervises Orange County’s homicide unit.

“We don’t know whether this guy was dead on impact or would have been alive a substantial time after impact. . . . It is a major consideration here: What is the appropriate charge?”

Anaheim police investigators said they believe LaBord survived the impact, and they will use that theory in a meeting with Orange County coroners and prosecutors before the arraignment to urge the district attorney to charge Hernandez with murder, said Lt. Ted Labahn, the head of Anaheim’s traffic division.

“I would not feel comfortable with just a manslaughter [charge] if there’s any possibility of getting a second degree,” Labahn said. “He might not have been dead. In my mind, that’s what it all hinges on.”

Under state law, a person involved in a car accident has a legal obligation to help injury victims. If LaBord survived the crash, Hernandez would have been obliged to take him to a hospital, Jacobs said.

Deputy Supervising Coroner Bruce Lyle would not comment Wednesday except to say, “It’s something that we would always look at. But I don’t know if it’s been ruled in or ruled out in this case.”

Investigators say LaBord, 18, was talking with friends and walking his bicycle along East Orangewood Avenue near Rampart Street in Anaheim when he was struck as he returned home from his job at the Converse shoe store at the Block in Orange.

His family said he was to have started classes Wednesday at Santa Ana College.

Anaheim Police Sgt. Joe Vargas said there is no evidence that alcohol or drugs played a role in Sunday night’s crash.

Hernandez is also a suspect in a May hit-and-run accident in which a bicyclist suffered abrasions when a car hit him.

Because witnesses could identify only the car involved in that accident, not Hernandez himself, that investigation stalled.

A Santa Ana attorney who represented Hernandez in a workers’ compensation case nearly two years ago did not return phone calls Wednesday.

Hernandez’s mother said he told family members that he woke up Monday morning and did not know how the windshield of his Civic had been demolished, police said.

His mother said Hernandez has suffered from headaches and depression since falling off a scaffolding and injuring his head in 1997.