LOS ANGELES (AP) - An 18-year-old Orange County woman was arrested on suspicion of driving drunk and killing a bicyclist in a hit-and-run crash after a sharp-eyed fire department official spotted her driving with a severely damaged windshield, authorities said.
Sommer Gonzales, a student from Tustin, remained jailed without bail on Monday night, a day after she was taken into custody in a parking lot while unloading items from her Toyota into a friend’s car, California Highway Patrol Officer Todd Kovaletz said.
It was not clear when Gonzales would be arraigned or whether she had hired a lawyer, and phone numbers of family members or associates could not be found.
Orange County Fire Authority Battalion Chief Marc Stone was on his way to work Sunday when he spied the Toyota with a badly damaged windshield driving in the opposite direction in Orange, Stone said. He thought the driver may have hit a deer.
“I don’t know how the person was driving the vehicle. The roof was caved in and the piece of metal that goes from the engine up to the roof was all bent in,” he said in a phone interview.
Stone slowed his car and began scanning the roadside. After a few miles, he spotted some tumbleweed in the road that looked like it had been crushed by a car and then saw a black bicycling shoe on the side of the road, he said.
“The road was very clean except for that one weird area. It just stood out,” he said.
Stone did a U-turn, pulled over and found an unresponsive man wearing bike gear who had been thrown over a guardrail near a bridge. Stone called 911, and an alert was issued for the damaged Toyota.
The 21-year-old bicyclist, Joseph Robinson of Irvine, was pronounced dead at the scene, according to coroner’s officials. Investigators found texts on Robinson’s cellphone from his girlfriend, wishing him a good ride and saying she was “looking forward to seeing you later,” fire authority spokesman Steve Concialdi said.
Gonzales was arrested in Rancho Santa Margarita, about 15 miles from the crash scene. Deputies determined she had been driving while impaired, Kovaletz said.
“The only thing for me is that poor kid probably would have still been there because nobody would have known where he was for several hours or a day … and maybe the suspect would have gotten away with it, too,” said Stone, who reported for his shift after calling in the incident.
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