Prosecutors who two months ago said they were eagerly waiting for a “comprehensive” scientific assessment of the multi-vehicle crash that killed three people last year, including two Valencia residents are still eagerly waiting for the same report.
“Right now, we’re still just waiting for that report,” Deputy District Attorney Michael Blake of the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office told The Signal Monday.
Dealio Lockhart, 35, of Whittier, appeared briefly in Los Angeles Superior Court Monday charged with murder in a crash that killed Brian Lewandowski, 18, Michelle Littlefield, 19, both of the Santa Clarita Valley.
Both Lewandowski and Littlefield had also been enrolled as students at College of the Canyons.
“We’re waiting for a report from the investigator at the CHP,” Blake told The Signal in March.
“We had an expert go through it,” he said, referring to the deadly crash and noting the study would provide a thorough analysis of it.
“This analysis done by the CHP is comprehensive with a lot of science,” he said.
Lockhart was to set a date Monday for a preliminary hearing, but that date – again – was put off at least another month.
This is the second delay in the setting of a preliminary hearing date for the Whittier man accused of killing three people in the crash. He previously appeared in court in January to set a date for his preliminary hearing, only to see it postponed until May.
The next court date for Lockhart to appear in court is July 19.
Blake said he had no idea when the report would be completed, noting CHP investigators spearheading the research were the same investigators who painstakingly compiled the lengthy report on the fiery crash inside the truck route tunnel of 2007.
On Oct. 12, 2007, a multi-vehicle crash inside the truck tunnel on Interstate 5 in the Newhall Pass and the subsequent fire killed two men and a boy, and injured 31 people.
Blake described the report that emerged from that 2007 crash investigation as “very detailed.”
Lockhart is suspected of racing his Dodge Challenger with another driver on Interstate 5 Feb. 27, 2016 in Commerce, causing a chain-reaction collision that killed two Valencia residents and a UPS truck driver from Mira Loma.
Santa Clarita students Littlefield and Lewandowski, the son of a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department homicide detective, were passengers in a Nissan with two other young people who were critically injured.
All four occupants of the Nissan were employees of Six Flags Magic Mountain returning from a trip to Disneyland.
UPS truck driver, Scott Treadway, 52, of Mira Loma, was also killed in the crash.
If convicted, Lockhart faces up to life in state prison.
Investigators with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and California Highway Patrol asked in March 2016, for the public’s help identifying the second driver involved in the fatal crash.
Lockhart remains the sole person charged in connection with the crash.
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