Fatal Plunge Ends Wrong-Way Drive

An 80-year-old Irvine woman died Monday after driving the wrong way for several miles on the Corona del Mar Freeway, then running off a 45-foot-high overpass onto a Costa Mesa street.

Authorities said the driver, Marjorie Ellen Noble, had been cited for speeding elsewhere in Orange County earlier in the day.

“She was wearing her seat belt,” said Officer Katrina Lundgren, a spokeswoman for the California Highway Patrol, adding, “We don’t believe that alcohol was involved.”

About 2:45 p.m., Lundgren said, several motorists reported seeing a woman driving a Mercury Cougar north in the southbound carpool and No. 1 lanes of the freeway at Newport Coast Drive in Irvine.

“We had a unit on the freeway running a traffic break and others were getting into position,” she said, when word came that the car had plunged from the freeway about four miles from where it had first been reported seen.

After crashing though a median of the divided highway, Lundgren said, the car dropped onto Baker Street, flipped onto its top, hit a freeway pillar and briefly caught fire.

“We believe that she died on impact,” Lundgren said.

No other cars were involved, she said, and the accident remains under investigation.