Five teenagers were killed in a car accident on Memorial Day on Jamboree Road in Newport Beach, CA. They were on their way to the beach when the accident occurred. No other vehicles were involved.
Although Newport Beach police are still investigating the cause of the accident, they believe the car was going well over the posted speed limit. The mayor of Newport Beach, Keith Curry, said he was told by police that the driver may have been going more than a hundred miles per hour. The legal speed limit is 55 miles per hour on the stretch of road where the accident occurred.
First responders said that the accident was so massive that when they arrived on the scene, they believed two cars had been involved. The car, a gray Infiniti G35, slammed into a tree in the center median so hard that it split in half and broke into pieces on the road.
In addition to driving at approximately twice the speed limit, the 17-year-old driver of the car, Abdulrahman Alyahyan, had no driver’s license or learner’s permit, according to a spokesman for the DMV, whose records show that Alyahyan visited the DMV twice (most recently in February of this year), but was denied a learner’s permit because he could not prove that he was in the country legally. He moved to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia four years ago.
Although the driver’s application for a permit was pending, even if it had been approved, he could not have legally driven with only other teens in the car. Under California law, no driver can carry passengers under the age of twenty for a year after they have been granted a provisional license without a parent or guardian in the vehicle.
Four of the teens were students at Irvine High School. The school brought in grief counselors when classes resumed after the holiday weekend.
The speed at which the driver was traveling as well as the fact that he had no license will undoubtedly be factors in any legal action taken by the families of the passengers killed in the crash. Many law firms like Callahan & Blaine have Newport Beach car accident lawyers who specialize in personal injury law, including injuries and deaths caused by motor vehicles.
Source: Scpr.org (Southern California Public Radio), “Newport Beach mayor says 17-year-old driver could have been going more than 100 MPH” Ben Bergman, May. 30, 2013
