A Canyon Country man accused of injurying his spouse, child abuse and other crimes pleaded not guilty to the charges filed against him.
David Charles, 58, faces two counts of attempted murder and one count each of injuring a spouse, mayhem, child abuse under circumstances or conditions likely to produce great bodily injury or death, assault with a deadly weapon, a car, and assault by means of force likely to produce great bodily injury, Ricardo Santiago, spokesman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said Monday.
The charges include an allegation of causing great bodily injury, he added.
Charles appeared Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court where he entered his plea.
He was ordered to return to court Oct. 18 to set a date for a preliminary hearing.
Charles was initially 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.
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.
“Deputies responded to the domestic violence incident in Canyon Country on Monday,” Shirley Miller, spokeswoman for the SCV Sheriff’s Station, 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.
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