Five dead and one badly injured after a Santa Ana speeding driver slammed into a tree

The SAPD posted early this moring on X, at around 1:30 a.m., that they were investigating a fatal traffic collision involving a single vehicle into a tree. They closed Segerstrom Avenue between Raitt Street and Greenville Street while investigating the accident but you knew this was a bad one when they also noted two hours ago that the media staging area for this incident will be located at the South corners of Townsend Street and Segerstrom Avenue.

The accident turned out to be a horrific one. There were six people inside one car and more than half of the victims turned out to be local teens.

The responding officers found six victims including five females and one male had been hurt in the collision. The preliminary police investigation revealed that the male driver was driving at a high rate of speed, westbound on Segerstrom, when he missed a turn and collided with a tree.

The crash happened in the area of West Segerstrom Avenue and South Townsend Street at around 11:30 p.m.

The result was breathtakingly awful. Four of the victims were pronounced dead at the scene. A fifth victim died at a nearby hospital while the sixth victim remains in critical condition. 

At least two of the victims were ejected from the car, which likely means they were not using seat belts. A nearby black sedan was slightly damaged during the collision but no one inside that vehicle was injured, as reported by KTLA.

The victims were apparently all related, although their exact relation has not yet been identified by the SAPD. Police investigators believe that impairment may have played a role in the crash.

The SAPD later confirmed that four of the victims were teenagers and the other two were adults.

Three of the juvenile victims and the two adult victims were pronounced dead at the scene. The remaining juvenile is the one in crtical condition at a local hospital.

Video footage shows that a large number of police officers were deployed to the accident scene and a fire crew used a ladder to access the vehicle, which was utterly wrecked. The remains of the vehicle lay next to the tree, in the center median.

Art Pedroza Editor

Our Editor, Art Pedroza, worked at the O.C. Register and the OC Weekly and studied journalism at CSUF and UCI. He has lived in Santa Ana for over 30 years and has served on several city and county commissions. When he is not writing or editing Pedroza specializes in risk control and occupational safety. He also teaches part time at Cerritos College and CSUF. Pedroza has an MBA from Keller University.

See Full Bio