Traffic Accidents

Two vehicles that may have been racing on the 60 Freeway in East Los Angeles caused a fiery six-car pileup that shut down westbound lanes for more than an hour Sunday morning, authorities said. The crash occurred at 3:47 a.m. west of the 710 Freeway near Indiana Street when one of the drivers apparently lost control, causing several other cars to collide, said Los Angeles County Fire Supervising Dispatcher Bryan Webb. At least one car caught fire, and bystanders reported pulling several people from the flames, he said.

A driver going the wrong way on the Antelope Valley Freeway early Sunday morning sideswiped one car and collided head-on with another, killing a 60-year-old Palmdale man, authorities said. About 3 a.m., a 30-year-old man driving a Ford Explorer began traveling north on the southbound side of California 14 near Santiago Road in Acton, according to the California Highway Patrol. About three minutes later, the Explorer sideswiped the first car, leaving its driver with moderate injuries, and then struck a 2006 Nissan Murano, killing its driver, authorities said.

The driver of a car that careened off the Pomona Freeway on Sunday morning suffered minor injuries and was able to get out of the vehicle, authorities said. The crash occurred about 9 a.m. from the eastbound freeway at Whittier Boulevard, said California Highway Patrol Officer Jennifer Connolly. The driver was trying to get off the freeway and lost control, Connolly said. He was treated at the scene and taken to a hospital, Connolly said. The cause of the crash was not immediately clear.

Ten illegal immigrants in the back of an SUV crammed with at least 27 people were killed when the driver lost control and rolled over on a remote southern Arizona highway, authorities said Sunday. The Ford Excursion had no rear seat and most of the men and women were ejected when the SUV crashed before midnight Saturday near Sonoita, about 40 miles southeast of Tucson. Authorities said all the victims were thought to be illegal immigrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Ecuador and perhaps Mexico.

A 21-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder and drunk driving after he allegedly slammed into a car at a Fullerton intersection, killing a motorist and injuring a passenger, police said Thursday. Shahjahan Pacheco of Garden Grove was driving north on Brookhurst Road at Commonwealth Avenue on Sunday when his vehicle collided with another, police said. The driver died at the scene; her passenger suffered minor injuries. Pacheco is being held on $1 million bail at Orange County Jail.

Late nearly every night, Vicki Kipper says, she hears the roar of drivers racing outside her Highland Avenue home, occasionally punctuated by the crunch of a speeding car tearing the side mirror off a parked car. "You hear them before you see them," said Kipper, who has lived on Highland for 26 years. "We also hear cars getting hit all the time out here."

The driver of a BMW that crashed into two cars Saturday and killed the driver and passenger of one was charged Wednesday with two counts of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, court officials said. Carlos Steven John, 21, of Granada Hills was also charged with felony driving under the influence causing injury, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney's office. John was racing another BMW in Hollywood just after 4 a.m. Saturday, police said. He was driving about 60 mph when his car hit two cars trying to turn south onto Highland Avenue from Sunset Boulevard.

Two men were killed early Saturday after one of them drove the wrong way on the 57 Freeway in Diamond Bar, colliding with the other driver in a minivan, California Highway Patrol officers reported. The fiery predawn collision occurred north of the 60 Freeway, officers said in a report. The three-car accident occurred about 4:15 a.m. when Jesse Fierro, 27, of Montebello drove his Ford F-150 truck south in the northbound lanes of the 57.

Oscar-winning screenwriter Roger Avary was trying to revive his wife in the middle of the road when a witness came upon his smashed-up car on a rural state highway near Ojai. "He was yelling, 'Don't die, Gretchen! Don't die!,' " said former Ventura County Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury, one of the first witnesses on the scene after the single-car crash early Sunday that left one man dead and Avary's wife, Gretchen, seriously injured.

A car thief fled from a chain-reaction collision she caused on the Costa Mesa Freeway on Wednesday by stealing another car from the accident scene, authorities said. "Apparently she upgraded," said Officer Jennifer Hink, a spokeswoman for the California Highway Patrol, noting the woman arrived in a 1993 Honda and left in a 2008 Toyota Camry. The accident occurred about 8 a.m. in the southbound lanes just north of Dyer Road. About two hours earlier, the woman had allegedly snatched the Honda from a Corona garage when its owner left its engine running to go back inside.