A suspected drunk driver was arrested after a two-vehicle crash that left a 13-year-old boy dead and others injured in Escondido on Saturday night, police said.
The collision happened just before 10 p.m. at the intersection of North Broadway and Country Club Lane, according to the Escondido Police Department.
Officers found several people injured at the scene, and three of them — a man, a woman and a 13-year-old boy, all from Escondido — were taken to nearby hospitals. The teenager was pronounced deceased at Palomar Medical Center, police said.
Police believe alcohol was a factor in the crash. One of the involved drivers, identified as Escondido resident Alexander Tito Oroz, 20, was arrested for felony DUI and gross vehicular manslaughter, the department said in a news release.
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Police say Oroz was driving the 13-year-old and a woman. It is unclear if the woman was also hurt.
Oroz was taken to the hospital for medical release and was booked into the Vista Detention Facility with gross vehicular manslaughter, DUI and child cruelty charges.
Oroz is being held on a $500,000 bail and is expected to be arraigned in court on Wednesday.
Anyone with information about the crash is asked to call an Escondido police collision investigator at 760-839-4423.
No other details were immediately available.
More crashes have happened at the intersection
This crash wasn't the only tragedy to happen at the same intersection.
Two other memorials — now weathered as the years have passed — eerily sit next to new skid marks. One of them is in memory of 42-year-old Veronica Espino, a mother who was killed in a two-car crash that also killed a 20-year-old man four years ago.
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Richard Sommer lives at the top of a hill that backs up to the street where the crashes happened.
"It says 55, while 65 is OK," Sommer said. "There's speeding all the time."
He says whether it's speeding or drunk driving over the years, it's taking too many lives.
"We've had a car coming around the corner here. A teenager hit a tree. It's no longer there, so there's a memorial there, so you got one, two, three, four, then we got a couple down the road a way," Sommer said.
