2 Motorcyclists Killed in Separate O.C. Crashes

An Orange County Fire Authority ambulance on an emergency call Saturday morning fatally struck a motorcyclist on the Ortega Highway in San Juan Capistrano, fire officials said.

Another paramedic unit was dispatched to the original call, officials said, but there were no signs of an emergency.

In another accident, a 28-year-old San Diego motorcyclist was killed in Santa Ana when she was hit by two cars, California Highway Patrol officials said.

Neither victim was identified because relatives had not been notified.

In the San Juan Capistrano incident, paramedics were responding to a call of a driver slumped over the steering wheel about 7 a.m. on the Ortega Highway, about 12 miles east of the San Diego Freeway, said Fire Capt. Stephen Miller.

A 31-year-old Lake Elsinore man was westbound on the Ortega Highway on a 1983 Yamaha motorcycle, Miller said. When the motorcyclist approached traffic that had slowed to make way for the eastbound ambulance about two miles north of Antonio Parkway, he veered into opposite lanes. He was thrown from the motorcycle and struck by the ambulance. He died at the scene. The two paramedics in the ambulance were not injured.

Miller said the original call may have been over someone reaching into the glove compartment that a passerby mistook for an emergency. “It’s not unusual for us to get that type of call,” Miller said.

In the Santa Ana crash, the motorcyclist was northbound on the Santa Ana Freeway when she was struck about 2:30 a.m. Saturday by a vehicle swerving to avoid a crash south of the Garden Grove Freeway, CHP officials said.

She was tossed from her 2005 Honda sports motorcycle and struck by a second car. She was taken to UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange where she died. No one else was injured.