Wrong-Way Crash Kills 3 on I-710

A 5-year-old Long Beach girl, her grandmother and an Inglewood man were killed Sunday, during an accident-filled morning that saw 27 cars piled up in Orange County and several collisions in the region.

Evelyn Sovan and her grandmother Merry Wild died in Long Beach when a driver going the wrong way on the Long Beach Freeway collided head-on with them, the California Highway Patrol said.

The driver, Javier Rendon, 27, was killed instantly in the three-car collision, authorities said.

Opening a Super Bowl Sunday that was filled with gnarled traffic most of the afternoon, the Long Beach crash occurred at about 2:30 a.m. in the southbound lanes of the Long Beach Freeway near Pacific Coast Highway. A driver’s Volkswagen Golf apparently entered the freeway on an exit ramp, the CHP said. He drove onto oncoming traffic and struck the Long Beach woman and her granddaughter, CHP Officer John Tye said.

The woman, 41, and the girl had major head injuries and died hours later at St. Mary’s Hospital in Long Beach, Tye said.

A 71-year-old Long Beach man driving a Honda Civic rear-ended the smashed vehicles. He suffered major head injuries and was hospitalized in critical condition but was expected to survive, Tye said.

The Volkswagen was running with its headlights off, and investigators were trying to determine whether the accident was alcohol-related, he said. The accident occurred before a short rainstorm hit the Long Beach area.

In a separate accident, in Orange County, a chain reaction attributed to rubbernecking, 13 people were injured and the northbound Santa Ana Freeway was closed for nearly four hours, authorities said.

One person was seriously injured and 12 others had minor injuries in the string of accidents that involved 27 vehicles near the Sand Canyon Avenue onramp in Irvine, said Capt. Scott Brown, spokesman for the Orange County Fire Authority.

“Fortunately, surprisingly, we had no fatalities,” Brown said.

The initial crash in Irvine was a minor, non-injury accident shortly before noon, said CHP Sgt. Steve Nibarger. Two motorists had pulled over to the right side of the highway to exchange information, he said.

Other drivers traveling northbound got distracted and slammed into each other, he said. Altogether, a cluster of four to six other accidents happened, leaving vehicles crunched and splayed across the Santa Ana Freeway.

The morning rain was just clearing Orange County when the accident happened. But Nibarger said authorities do not believe slick roads played a primary role.

“The biggest factor was distraction plus the speed they traveled,” he said.

Paramedics took the injured to five area hospitals. One person suffered serious injuries and was taken to the trauma center at Western Medical Center-Santa Ana, while the others were treated for minor injuries and later released.

Traffic was diverted off the Santa Ana Freeway to the San Diego Freeway. Northbound freeway lanes were closed until about 3:30 p.m., the CHP said.

In Los Angeles, a pileup took place in Koreatown, where an unidentified driver ran a red light, police said, causing a four-car crash that left eight people hospitalized with minor injuries.