By Perry Smith and Jim Holt
A Canyon Country man was booked on an attempted murder charge and being held in lieu of $2.1 million bail after an alleged domestic violence incident led to a pursuit and wrong-way freeway crash.
David Charles, 58, of Canyon Country, has been booked on attempted murder, and other charges are expected, according to law enforcement officials. His arrest date was listed as Sept. 9, but a law enforcement official with information confirmed Charles was recently booked after being released from the hospital.
Charles had reportedly been in the hospital since a Sept. 2 collision in which he was hit after running from deputies.
The man was in critical condition after the collision.
The charges against Charles stem from an investigation that started with a domestic violence call, according to law enforcement officials who were not authorized to speak to the specifics of the investigation at this time.
The domestic violence call preceded the wrong-way collision on Highway 14 on Sept. 2.
According to a previous story: https://signalscv.com/2019/09/man-hit-by-car-after-fleeing-deputies-surviving-head-on-crash/
The series of calamities began shortly before 5:20 p.m. Sept. 2, when deputies with the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station responded to a domestic violence call, said Shirley Miller, spokeswoman for the SCV Sheriff’s Station.
“Deputies responded to the domestic violence incident in Canyon Country on Monday,” she said Sept. 3.
The man allegedly bolted from deputies as they moved in to investigate the domestic violence call.
The suspect then allegedly got into a car with his teenage child and drove the wrong way on Highway 14, crashing head-on with at least one other vehicle — then running, along with his child, across four lanes of the highway to Soledad Canyon Road, where he was hit by a car, officials said.
The teen child was not physically injured in the incident, according to officials.
At 5:20 p.m., paramedics with the Los Angeles County Fire Department responded to reports of a traffic collision with people possibly trapped in an overturned vehicle on the southbound lanes of Highway 14, just north of Sand Canyon Road.
When they arrived at the crash site, they found a multi-vehicle head-on traffic collision involving at least three vehicles, Fire Department spokesman Austin Bennett said Tuesday.
“We had reports of 15 vehicles involved, but that could not be confirmed,” he said.
None of the people involved in the traffic collision were taken to the hospital, he added.
Before closing their report, however, paramedics reported that “the person from the disabled vehicle, left the vehicle and ran across the northbound lanes of Highway 14,” Bennett said.
“A guy with a kid was leaving his house in a hurry and ended up driving the wrong way on the highway,” said Officer Josh Greengard with the California Highway Patrol. “He crashed the car and attempted to flee the scene, crossing the northbound lanes on foot, He was leading a teenage kid by the hand,” he added, noting the man was hit by a car on Soledad.
Paramedics treated the man for several broken bones and he was taken to the hospital.
CHP officers were still preparing their full report of the Sept. 2 incident.
The suspect was arrested by CHP investigators on suspicion of child endangerment and hit and run.
