A crash involving two cars would have been bad enough. This one just kept collecting vehicles.
It happened shortly before 1 a.m. Tuesday on Rosecrans Avenue in Norwalk, California, where two cars traveling eastbound collided. According to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, one rear-ended the other and both went rolling.
Then another driver coming up behind them lost control and slammed into parked cars. Other moving vehicles were caught up in the wreck as well.
By the time it was over, authorities counted 16 vehicles involved or damaged — including 11 that had simply been parked along the street. One driver was killed after being ejected from one of the cars that rolled.
And Then There’s This
The wreckage shown in the video gives you some idea of how far everything spread. Cars are smashed front and back, debris is scattered across Rosecrans Avenue, and one vehicle ended up upside down.
ABC7 reported that the sheriff’s department said some of the cars had been racing at high speed before the crash. The station reported that two other people were injured.
There is a wrinkle, though.
LASD Capt. Omar Camacho gave CBS Los Angeles a more cautious assessment from the scene. Investigators suspected speed could have played a role, but Camacho said they could not yet determine that and, at that point, had no evidence establishing that the crash came from street racing.
So we have two reports carrying different versions of what LASD was saying as the investigation developed. What is clear is the sequence of the wreck itself.
It Kept Going
Sheriff’s Deputy Tracy Koerner told MyNewsLA that the initial two cars were headed east when one rear-ended the other near Rosecrans and Longworth avenues.
Both rolled several times.
A third vehicle traveling behind them then hit multiple parked cars. CBS reported that the chain reaction ultimately involved five cars that had been moving and 11 that had been parked.
The man who died had been driving one of the vehicles that rolled and was thrown from it, according to authorities. His identity had not been released.
And for all the attention the suspected racing received, investigators had not publicly established that the man who died was one of the people racing.
Eleven Cars Were Just Sitting There
That leaves another group in this mess: the people who went to bed with perfectly usable cars parked outside.
Manuel Arreola told CBS that his Honda was among the 11 parked vehicles damaged in the crash. It wasn’t just something he could leave sitting at a body shop indefinitely, either. He said he relies on the car every day to get to work.
Residents told ABC7 that racing and street takeovers have been an ongoing problem in the area. Mario Gonzalez said people living there regularly hear it happening overnight.
Investigators were expected to look at surveillance and doorbell video as they worked out exactly what happened before the first impact.
Whatever that evidence ultimately shows, there probably aren’t many people on Rosecrans Avenue who expected to wake up Tuesday morning and discover their parked car had somehow become vehicle No. 12, 13, 14, 15 or 16 in an overnight crash.