2nd Teen Involved in Accident Pronounced Dead

A star player on Buena High School’s softball team was pronounced dead Tuesday night from injuries she sustained a day earlier when a car she was riding in plunged off the Ventura Freeway, the California Highway Patrol reported.

Lea Casillas, 16, was the second passenger declared dead of injuries in the crash, which occurred Monday morning as three girlfriends rushed to a local graduation ceremony. A back-seat passenger, Ana Rosa Uribe, 17, died instantly.

Casillas, a junior at the Ventura school, was pronounced dead Tuesday night after having been in a coma at Ventura County Medical Center, CHP Officer Dave Webb said.

Meanwhile, driver Sopheak “Sophie” Riem, 18, who suffered head and internal injuries, was awake and talking after being in and out of consciousness after Monday’s accident, officials said. She is being treated in the intensive care unit of Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura.

CHP investigators plan to interview Riem at her beside today to glean more insight into what caused the crash on the Ventura Freeway.

The trio were headed to Ventura to see a friend’s graduation from Pacific High School when the car plunged off the Johnson Drive bridge and landed upside-down on railroad tracks, authorities said.

Running close to an hour late for the continuation school’s 10 a.m. ceremony, Riem may have been driving as fast as 80 mph, witnesses said. Preliminary toxicology tests done at the hospital showed Riem had no drugs or alcohol in her system.

Despite reports by two motorists that the car may have struck a sandbag on the roadway, CHP and Caltrans officials said Tuesday that there is no evidence that debris of any kind was a factor in the crash.

Officers have viewed surveillance videotapes from a nearby storage facility that captured portions of the crash from cameras at four locations.

CHP Officer R. J. Regan said the video shows Riem’s car striking the guardrail almost head-on--indicating she may have fishtailed sideways--and launching into the air.

“She went quite a distance and came down at least 60 feet,” Regan said. “The vehicle was rotating, and it appears she was traveling at a pretty good rate of speed.”

The tapes were stored Tuesday in an evidence locker at the CHP station. Officers plan to ask imaging experts to use equipment that can zoom in on pictures to get a closer look.

Regan said he will return to the scene to remeasure skid marks left by the vehicle, hoping to determine how fast the car was traveling.

Webb said that although the hospital’s blood tests on Riem came back clean, officers will wait for results of their own tests being done at the county crime lab before making a final determination.

In addition, Regan said a plastic grocery bag containing several dozen small red capsules was found in the back seat of the car. Those pills were also being analyzed at the Ventura County Crime Lab.

Results of both tests will be available in two weeks, officers said.

“We think that she was probably just in a hurry to get to that ceremony,” Regan said. “Something happened, and we are looking at all possibilities, but it’s still just a tragic story.”

At Buena High School, where Uribe and Casillas met and became friends, extra counselors were made available to speak with grieving students. Uribe later transferred to El Camino High in Ventura. No memorials or services at either school have been planned, friends of both girls said.

Buena softball team members had posted get-well banners and photo boards in the hospital waiting room.

A small memorial of flowers, a make-shift cross, candles and a small bag of debris from the crash have been placed near the tracks where the car landed.