Teen Dies as Car Falls Into Canyon

A 17-year-old girl was killed and a 17-year-old boy was in serious condition Thursday after their car skidded off a two-lane road in Meiners Oaks and plunged 100 feet into a canyon.

Jean Whitlock of Ojai, a passenger in the silver Ford Contour, died at the scene of the crash, coroner’s officials said.

Driver Thomas Peterson was rushed by helicopter to Ventura County Medical Center, where he was in stable condition Thursday evening.

The Ojai teens were traveling south on Rice Road at 1:30 p.m., when Thomas lost control of the car just past a curve at the intersection with El Roblar Drive, authorities said.

The car skidded into the northbound lane, then veered back into the southbound lane and slid off a sheer drop, leaving a long stretch of tire marks on the road.

California Highway Patrol Officer David Webb said the pair appeared to have been traveling “at dangerous speeds” and exceeding the posted speed limit of 45 mph.

After Thomas lost control of the vehicle and found himself in the wrong lane, Webb said, “he tried to correct, he over-corrected, and went over the side.”

The pair had been wearing their seat belts.

At Jean’s home Thursday evening, the family was gathered to look over pictures of her and remember their daughter and sister.

“All the family is over here, trying to stop crying,” said her stepfather, Paul Anderson. “Bit by bit, more and more of her friends were coming by.”

Jean, a smiling, spunky girl, had been given a ride by Thomas, her boyfriend’s brother, Anderson said.

She was an active girl who was heading into her senior year at Nordhoff High School and enjoyed playing sports, he said. She had been planning to play in a softball game Thursday evening.

Anderson said she was popular, with many friends, and but was always willing to speak her mind.

“She’d stand up for what was right,” Anderson said. “She was a leader, not a follower.”

He said the family has not yet made plans for a memorial.

There are no guardrails on the stretch of road where the accident occurred. They stop around the intersection, a few hundred feet north of the spot where the car left the road.

At least one other vehicle has driven off Rice Road into Cozy Dell Canyon at that spot in recent years, Webb said.

On Thursday, the car landed on its side, the driver’s side down, beside a rocky, dried-up Cozy Dell Creek.

Papers and clothes had fallen out of the car’s windows and were strewn around the area of the crash.

Traffic was closed on Rice Road between El Roblar Drive and Lomita Avenue all afternoon.