A traffic detective with the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department believes information from the vehicles in a Feb. 6 three-vehicle crash will reveal important information into what led up to the deaths of a husband and wife from Canyon Country and serious injuries to their daughter.
The crash happened just before midnight at the city’s busiest intersection by daily traffic volume — Bouquet Canyon and Newhall Ranch roads.
Earlier this month, detectives sought the “event data recorder” from a 2021 Chevrolet Colorado that was involved, which they suspect to be at fault in the crash, as well as one from an SUV and another from a GMC truck.
The driver’s intoxication level and some of the circumstances surrounding the crash are published in court records requesting a search of that equipment.
Detectives told a judge that equipment will help them understand more about what was happening in the vehicles for the moments leading up to a crash that killed Silvia “Patty” Lux, 49, and Genry Ortiz Torres, 54, and left their daughter, Erin Paulina Ortiz, seriously injured.
The Signal has chosen not to identify the 17-year-old driver believed to be responsible for the crash. Due to his age, his case is currently in the Juvenile Division of L.A. County Superior Court, which does not consider the names of its defendants as public records under state law.
Crash narrative
In a request for a search warrant to retrieve the data from the Colorado, LASD investigators revealed for the first time what they think happened at 11:58 p.m. on the night of the crash.
The teen was driving the four-door truck “at a high rate of speed” southbound on Bouquet Canyon Road toward Newhall Ranch Road.
The investigator said that the high speed was “evident by tire friction (skid) marks left on the roadway leading up to the crash“ and verified by independent dash cam footage submitted into evidence by an uninvolved motorist traveling in the same direction as the Colorado, according to the search-warrant request.
What came back from the warrant was pages and pages of data that tell detectives the following at the time of the crash: how fast and in which direction the motor vehicle is traveling; a history of where the motor vehicle travels; steering performance; brake performance, including, but not limited to, whether brakes were applied before a crash; and the driver’s seatbelt status. Many recorders also have the ability to automatically transmit information when a crash occurs.
Detectives reported they have multiple dash-cam videos that show the Colorado driving through a solid red light and crashing into the driver’s side bumper of the white 2019 Honda CR-V that Ortiz was driving, according to the warrant.
The force of the collision caused the Colorado to flip and roll in a southeast direction through the intersection, according to the detective’s summary, with the truck coming to a rest on the east curbline of Bouquet Canyon Road, south of the intersection. Ortiz’s CR-V then crashed head-on into a stopped 2019 GMC Sierra.
Detectives reported seeing “multiple bottles of alcohol located around the crash scene as well as inside the (Colorado),” according to the warrant request.
Case status
The deputy leading the investigation at the scene of the crash interviewed the driver at the scene of the crash, who indicated “he was attempting to time the green light, but the light never turned green,” according to courthouse records. “I observed the objective signs and symptoms of a person under the influence of alcohol. I administered the standardized field sobriety tests. The subject provided two samples of his breath using a preliminary alcohol screening device. The results were .026% and .024%. I determined the subject was driving under the influence of alcohol.”
The booking charges listed for the driver included gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated; being a minor under the influence behind the wheel; and a DUI causing injury, according to the warrant granted Feb. 16 by Judge Rubiya Nur of the Eastern District in the Central Criminal Magistrate Unit.
The investigation is currently with the LASD Traffic Services Detail, which is a division of the Major Crimes Bureau that often investigates “high-profile” crashes, including ones that have multiple fatalities, according to Sgt. Michael Downing, who leads the unit.
A case had not been presented to the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office yet for the consideration of charges, he said last week, adding a likely timeline would be at least two months. He indicated there was copious amounts of evidence to process, which includes dozens of pages that came back from the involved vehicles’ recorders, blood samples from the laboratory and crash-scene reconstructions.
