Police Seek Driver of SUV That Delivered Deadly Blow to Man

The first driver to hit the pedestrian was a woman turning onto South Coast Highway at dusk. She only knocked him down. The second driver delivered the fatal blow, got out, took a look and drove away. He left the dying man to be battered by a parade of speeding cars.

On Wednesday, Laguna Beach police were searching for that second driver and the identity of the victim in Tuesday’s crash--a man believed to be in his 60s wearing tan trousers, a baggy sweater and carrying bags containing Jack in the Box hamburgers and Kentucky Fried Chicken.

“It was horrible,” Laguna Beach Police Chief Jim Spreine said .

What is striking, he and others said, is the callousness of the person who drove away, leaving the battered man’s body a target for other cars that followed.

“That is beyond beyond,” said Pamela Goldstein, who lives across the highway in the Lagunita gated neighborhood.

The driver of the Ford Expedition that first hit the man, who had just left St. Catherine School, immediately pulled into the turning lane and dialed 911 on a cell phone. Then she and her two sons, ages 11 and 12, watched a series of vehicles slam into the injured man at 55 to 60 mph.

“Other cars were coming, and they just kept hitting him,” the frantic woman said on a tape released by police. “If I could only have gotten him out of the street, he would still be alive.”

Said Spreine: “She’s putting all of the blame on herself. But she’s not the one that killed him.”

Investigators are unsure whether the driver of the second vehicle, a white sport utility vehicle--was a man or a woman, but they plan to distribute fliers to auto body shops and carwashes in hopes of obtaining information.

“This is a very, very difficult crime to solve,” Spreine said. “We have to have a tip or a lead. Or maybe a person’s conscience finally gets to them.”

Four to five other vehicles hit the victim. One of them may have left the scene too.

The accident frayed nerves among residents along the busy coastal highway, a hilly four-lane route lined with bougainvillea and full of blind approaches, where the 45 mph speed limit is routinely ignored.

“People just fly through there,” said Kevin Hornby, manager of Laguna Terrace Park, where mobile homes resting on hilltop ocean-view lots lease for upward of $2,000 a month. “I know of three people in this park who have been involved in major accidents. I can hear the screech of tires and the crunch of metal from up here.”

Spreine, however, said there’s no evidence the area is any more dangerous than the rest of the busy coastal road.

Where the man who was hit was headed remains a mystery. He carried no identification, and investigators think he may have been a transient. Police have sent fingerprints to the FBI hoping for a match.

A security camera caught him buying hamburgers at Jack in the Box in central Laguna Beach at 5:03 p.m. He was hit about 45 minutes later about a mile down the road, carrying enough food for more than one person.

On Wednesday, a bouquet of flowers purchased from a nearby stand lay at curbside.

Anyone with information on the incident is asked to call Laguna Beach police at (949) 497-0701.

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A Pedestrian’s Nightmare

A man died after several cars ran over him on Coast Highway in Laguna Beach, police said. How police say the accident occurred:

Source: Laguna Beach Police Department

Graphics reporting by BRADY MacDONALD / Los Angeles Times