Driver in fatal crash set to turn himself in

Pedro Pleitez, 32, sits with his family, from left, Pedro Jr., 7, Victoria, 2, and Carmen, 15, in their Rancho Santa Margarita condo. Pleitez’s common law wife, Ana Martinez, was killed in a crash involving a driver suspected to have been drunk on May 7, 2013, five days before Mother’s Day.
FILE: KEVIN SULLIVAN, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

A man with a history of alcohol-related arrests is expected to turn himself in Tuesday to face a murder charge in connection with a wrong-way crash that claimed the life of a mother of three more than eight months ago.

William Joseph Carroll, 47, formerly of Mission Viejo, had been a free man, living in his native New York, after recovering from serious injuries following the May 7 crash that killed Ana Martinez, 36, of Rancho Santa Margarita. Carroll faces 15 years to life in state prison if convicted.

A warrant for Carroll’s arrest was issued Jan. 16 for him to face charges of second-degree murder. Since then, police in New York, working with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, have been trying to locate Carroll and arrest him.

Monday, a sheriff’s spokesman said Carroll’s attorney has informed law enforcement officials that Carroll will be turning himself in to police in Albany, N.Y. He is expected to be extradited to Orange County.

Relatives of Martinez, as well as an acquaintance of Carroll’s interviewed by the Register, have questioned why it has taken more than eight months for charges to be filed against Carroll, whom sheriff’s investigators had suspected of drinking before the violent, late-night collision.

Carroll was driving his red Ford F-250 truck the wrong direction on Santa Margarita Parkway in Mission Viejo when he slammed into a white Toyota Sienna minivan driven by Martinez, according to sheriff’s investigators.

Martinez was driving to pick up her father after he’d finished his shift at a restaurant in Foothill Ranch.

The District Attorney’s Office has had the Carroll case for about three weeks.

Lt. Jeff Hallock, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, said every DUI investigation is different and the time it takes for a case to be turned over to the district attorney for possible criminal charges can vary.

In Carroll’s case, he was injured in the crash and hospitalized and, as a result, was not immediately arrested or booked, Hallock said.

Carroll also was not considered a flight risk and sheriff’s investigators have tracked his whereabouts, Hallock said.

Toxicology reports also took longer than expected, Hallock said. Test results typically are known within four months.

Details of the pending criminal complaint were not available Monday.

SUICIDE MISSION?

Several people who know Carroll said they’ve heard a voice message he allegedly left several hours before the crash, telling a former girlfriend he was drunk and weaving all over the road and that he was “going to die tonight.”

An attorney working for Martinez’s survivors says Carroll was trying to kill himself in the crash.

“This tragic and unnecessary accident has left a dark, empty hole from the loss of a wife, mother and daughter,” said Keith Bremer, a Newport Beach attorney who is representing Martinez’s common-law husband, Pedro Pleitez, and her children, Carmen, 15, Pedro Jr., 7, and Victoria, 2 at the time of the accident.

A former acquaintance of Carroll, Paula Sharp, 77, of Mission Viejo, said she has heard the voice mail. She said she knew Carroll because they both frequented Peppino’s restaurant in Mission Viejo. She said he’d seemed increasingly depressed over a recent romantic breakup.

She said Carroll had been sharing a house with several roommates and working odd jobs, including woodworking.

Court records show that before the fatal crash, Carroll had been arrested at least three times following alcohol-related incidents.

Carroll pleaded guilty in 2008 to driving in Orange County with a blood-alcohol level over the legal limit. At the time, he initialed a form that included the following statement:

“If I continue to drive while under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or both, and as a result of that driving someone is killed, I can be charged with murder.”

That acknowledgment became the “implied malice” that makes it possible for prosecutors to charge Carroll with second-degree murder rather than the less-serious charge of vehicular manslaughter.

Tyler Offenhauser, an associate of Bremer’s, said their law firm is working pro bono with Pleitez so he can adopt Martinez’s oldest daughter, Carmen. The younger siblings are the biological children of Martinez and Pleitez.

Pleitez has helped raise Carmen since she was a little girl.

“He’s been the only father figure she’s ever had,” Offenhauser said.

Offenhauser also said a wrongful-death lawsuit has been filed on behalf of the Martinez family against Carroll.

Source: www.ocregister.com

By GREG HARDESTY / ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

If you are charged with a crime, contact an experienced Orange County Bail Bondsman to assist you in any bail situation.

 

Rancho’s bridges: Could barriers stop suicides?

RANCHO SANTA MARGARITA – Brooke Vargas can’t bring herself to go near the Santa Margarita Parkway bridge since her aunt took her life there last month.

When Michele McKay’s body was found in the dry creek bed below the 66-foot-high bridge linking Mission Viejo and Rancho Santa Margarita, Vargas and other family members were devastated.

Vargas remembers her aunt as a beautiful woman with a huge heart who would help anyone. So she and other family members were concerned when McKay left her Lake Forest home on Sept. 3 without any personal belongings. They reported the 56-year-old woman missing, telling authorities she had been distraught over medical and financial issues. Sheriff’s deputies discovered her body five days later.

“I think Rancho Santa Margarita bridges are becoming a popular spot for mentally sick people and it’s heartbreaking,” Vargas said. “I don’t want to go there knowing people have done horrible things there.”

Eight deaths and six thwarted suicide attempts have been reported at the four bridges in Rancho Santa Margarita since the city incorporated in 2000. Just since March, three people were talked down by Orange County sheriff’s deputies, one man who survived a jump from the Santa Margarita Parkway Bridge in 2011 died in July after he jumped off a bridge a mile out of town, and McKay’s body was found just after Labor Day.

The city, ranked in 2010 and 2009 as the state’s safest among cities with similar population sizes in an FBI report, is making headlines over the recent bridge suicides and deputy rescues. And that prompted Councilman Jerry Holloway and several council candidates to say it’s time for the city to install safety barriers on the bridges to keep troubled people from jumping and deputies from risking their lives to protect them. Other city leaders contend that safety precautions won’t deter those determined to take their own lives.

“It’s very depressing and discouraging to see this go on,” said Holloway, who in 2010 called an emergency meeting after an earlier rash of suicides. “I’m wondering if we would have preventive measures, would these things have occurred? It’s happened enough over a period of time to show it will occur again.”

Holloway, whose term on the City Council expires this year, says he hopes to get the issue before his colleagues by the end of October.

CITY REPORT: BARRIERS DETER JUMPS

 

In 2010, the City Council heard a report stating that bridge barriers, netting and signs were proven to stop suicide attempts. Council members reviewed the costs – ranging from $3,000 for signs to $13.6 million for exterior netting. They also looked at a survey that said 78.2 percent of residents opposed any fencing or netting, many saying it would block views and degrade the look of the bridges.

Holloway didn’t get the support he needed. Council members put off a decision on the netting and fencing and asked staff to report back when new information became available. Instead, the city posted suicide prevention information on its website.

Despite the recent headlines, city officials have said the city’s suicide rate was at or below the county’s numbers, citing a 2009 report. However, the 2010 county report shows Rancho Santa Margarita’s rate is 11.5 per 100,000 and the county’s rate is 9.3 per 100,000.

“It happens all over the place and you don’t read about it,” Mayor Tony Beall said, adding that he had not seen the latest report on suicide rates. “You hear about the ones where people hurl themselves onto freeways. Even if you invest in the greatest level of protection to save people from themselves, people who want to hurt themselves will, no matter what.”

The city did add some safety features on the Santa Margarita Parkway Bridge after Gregory Wolters, a city contractor, died in an accidental fall in 2006. His family sued the city, claiming the bridge had inadequate lighting and railing. In 2007, the city used a $283,000 grant from the California Department of Transportation to replace tubular hand railing with cable railing.

A year later the city added more lights and also put poles in the middle of the two Santa Margarita Parkway bridge segments to prevent people from falling between them. The city has already spent more than $500,000 in safety improvements, Beall said.

DEPUTIES SAVE LIVES

 

In recent months, sheriff’s deputies who have stopped people from jumping off the bridges have been recognized by the City Council and given certificates for their lifesaving deeds. In each case, the deputies put themselves in harm’s way.

In June, Deputy Tim Africano jackknifed his body over a chain-link fence to grab a teen inches from a 50-foot plunge to the 241 toll road below.

In August, a man told his father he was going to commit suicide by jumping off a city bridge. Deputies found the man near Antonio Parkway and Tijeras Creek Road. They chased him across several lanes of traffic and tried to communicate with him. In the end, Deputy Felipe Martinez pulled him from the rail of the bridge.

While Holloway applauded their efforts, he said they, too, are subject to dangers that might not be there had safety barriers been installed.

“It’s a long shot to leave it to being found by a deputy,” he said. “Now they’re the last line of defense. If we do something and prevent even one suicide, it’s a win. If we go five years and there’s been no suicide, maybe we have a success. You can’t measure this like you can measure some things you spend money on.”

Sheriff’s Lt. Brian Schmutz knew about the suicides when he took over as the city’s chief of police in 2011. He makes sure his deputies do what they can to monitor the bridges for anything suspicious. But he says he has to balance monitoring the bridges with keeping residents throughout the city safe.

“We have a duty to protect a person from injury even if it’s from harming themselves,” Schmutz said. “We also have a duty to family members to get the person home safely or to the treatment they need.”

ADVOCATES: BARRIERS STOP SUICIDES

 

National and local suicide-prevention groups say data supports bridge barriers, netting and signs as effective ways of stopping suicides.

Kita Curry, president and CEO of Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services, recently approved by the county as the operator of the Orange County Crisis Prevention Hotline, is an advocate of bridge barriers.

“Barriers do reduce the risk of suicides. We know they can be very effective,” Curry said. “Often local governments are concerned about the cost. Cheap barriers may not be quite as effective but they are better than no barrier at all.”

John Draper, director of the National Suicide Prevention Hotline, wrote a report in 2007 that looked at how successful barriers were in preventing suicides from bridges.

A barrier put up at the Bloor Street Viaduct, a bridge in Vancouver, British Columbia, is an example of a barrier that still allows views, according to the report by the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Committee. The barrier, dubbed the “luminous veil,” is constructed with wider-set poles to allow views through the netting.

By 2003, the 480 deaths by suicide from the Bloor Street Viaduct were second only to those from San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. Despite mixed public opinion and resistance from some community groups, suicide-prevention advocates got city officials to install the barrier. Since that time there have been no suicides, the report said. A fundraising campaign raised $3 million of the $5.5 million construction cost for the Canadian bridge barrier.

When barriers were removed from the Grafton Bridge in New Zealand in 1996, the site experienced a fivefold increase in suicides, the report said. Later, when the barriers were reinstalled in 2003, no more suicides occurred, according to the report.

TAKING ANOTHER LOOK

Two years ago, Holloway called for the emergency council meeting to consider ways to make the four city bridges safer.

At the time, some on the council said safety barriers wouldn’t deter those who want to jump. Holloway’s philosophy was, “maybe so, maybe not, but if it keeps people from out of our area away, that’s good.”

Now he wants the city to take another look.

“I’d like to see city government look for collaborative ways to put preventative measures in place,” he said. “If we can save one life by having preventive measures, then we have success. If there are funds for fencing and netting, we should be looking at this.”

The bridge suicides have also become a topic of discussion at Rancho Santa Margarita council election debates.

“I was getting my hair cut and the guy who cuts my hair asked me if anyone else has jumped from our bridges,” council candidate Kenney Hrabik said during a recent forum. “We talk about $19 million in reserves, we’re safe from crime statistics, but when it comes to suicides, we’re No. 1 in deaths.”

Hrabik said he regularly brings up the issue with residents on his stumps through town. About 80-90 percent of those he talks to are in support of some kind of fencing, he said.

“I will personally take this on,” he said. “If the council won’t use some of the $19 million in reserves, I will find a way to personally fundraise the money. We’re getting to be known as the bridge to jump from; that’s not a headline Rancho needs.”

Source: www.ocregister.com

By ERIKA I. RITCHIE/ THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

If you are charged with a crime, contact an experienced Orange County Bail Bondsman to assist you in any bail situtation.

 

Boy tells of molestation by child-care worker

SANTA ANA – A 6-year-old boy in a videotaped interview shown to an Orange County jury told a social worker about a child-care worker putting his hands down the boy’s shorts.

The boy is one of two children Scott Andrew Christensen, 28, of Rancho Santa Margarita is accused of molesting between 2000 and 2006 when he was working at The Learning Connection, an after-school program hosted by Saddleback Valley Unified School District.

Christensen is charged with three felony counts of lewd acts on a child younger than 14 with sentencing enhancement allegations for substantial sexual conduct with a child and committing the sexual acts against more than one victim.

If convicted on all charges, the former day-care worker, who in 2008 was found guilty of two felony counts of molesting another 6-year-old boy while babysitting him at the boy’s home, faces a possible 45 years to life in state prison.

Deputy District Attorney Nagy Morcos played the videotape for jurors Wednesday in Superior Court Judge Gary Paer’s courtroom and rested his case in chief later in the day.

Christensen sexually assaulted the boy twice between September 2005 and August 2006 while students watched a movie, prosecutors say.

After the first incident, the boy, who was videotaped by social workers without his knowledge so he would speak freely, said he walked away after a couple of seconds. The child said Christensen also touched him under his clothes a second time.

“Now, can we get it over with?” the boy is seen saying on the video, uncomfortably recounting the events.

Between May 2000 and August 2004, prosecutors say, Christensen sat next to another boy in the day-care program during a movie with the lights out and put the victim’s hand down the front of the defendant’s pants.

Defense attorney Gary Pohlson, who begins presenting his case Thursday, said it is impossible for the incidents to have occurred when the two boys say they did because others were present at the day care at the same time.

 

Like to sleep in your car? Not in Rancho

RANCHO SANTA MARGARITA – Anyone found sleeping in their vehicle on city property could face a fine of $1,000 or six months in jail.

The City Council in Wednesday voted 4-1 to pass an ordinance that the city’s Chief of Police Lt. Brian Schmutz said will give his deputies greater control in responding to ‘suspicious person in car’ calls.

Schmutz told the council in the last year his department has responded to 330 calls for such service. At least a couple dozen have been found to be “sleeping in cars” calls, he said. Others, he said, residents voiced concerned about people doing drugs in their vehicles or casing a neighborhood.

Schmutz said he asked the council to take a look at this law after doing an analysis of training needs and patrol schedule for his deputies.

“One tool used to enforce neighborhood safety would be this ordinance,” Schmutz said.

He also pointed to cities such as Lake Forest, Aliso Viejo, Mission Viejo Tustin, San Juan Capistrano, San Clemente Laguna Niguel, Costa Mesa and Irvine, who already have the law on their books. In some cases, the laws are more stringently enforced allowing no sleeping in cars at any time, he added.

Schmutz also cited an arrest of a man found sleeping in his car last year near a school zone. In this case, the man arrested for possession of a loaded firearm. During their investigation deputies also found police insignia and handcuffs. Later, the located the keys for the handcuffs in the man’s socks, Schmutz said.

The ordinance, which will go to a second reading on March 14 to allow for more public input, would prohibit anyone from sleeping in a car, trailer, camper or tent traveler parked on a city maintained street or alley between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. It will not be enforced on private property. If passed then it will go into effect 30 days later.

Councilman Jesse Petrilla said he was not in favor of the law citing safety concerns such as a tired driver.

“When the 241 Toll Road is complete travelers may be passing through from as far away as San Diego,” he said. If they feel they may fall asleep, this could be dangerous. If someone is down on their luck, I believe the last thing they need is a $1,000 fine or six months in jail.”

“I believe in private property rights and limited government,” he said. “This goes a little bit farther than I feel comfortable with.”

The council discussed issues regarding a tired driver and homelessness as well as the possibility of an intoxicated driver.

Schmutz pointed out that homeless people could still sleep at other locations such as commercial centers, restaurants or camp grounds. He pointed out that someone sleeping in their car in a neighborhood would not be fair to residents and reminded the council there are no bathroom facilities in such a case. He also added that a sleeping person is vulnerable when sleeping in public.

As far as motorists sleeping off a hangover, Schmutz said a person can still be arrested for DUI if they are found behind the wheel with keys in their car, even if they’re asleep.

“Our City Council is committed to providing every possible tool to our police department to ensure the streets and neighborhoods of Rancho Santa Margarita always remain the safest in the state of California, Mayor Tony Beall said.

 

Police: Another report of attempt to lure student into car

Deputies are investigating a second report of an attempt by young men to lure a South County middle school student into a vehicle and trying to determine if the incidents were pranks, an Orange County Sheriff’s Department official said Tuesday.

The second report came from a 12-year-old boy who said he was approached by a large, white SUV with more than two occupants as he was riding his bicycle near Trabuco Mesa Elementary School in Rancho Santa Margarita, Sgt. Nancy Wilkey said. The boy was asked to stop riding his bike, but he kept bicycling and the driver took off, Wilkey said. The incident happened about 3:05p.m. Friday.

At about 3:20 p.m. Friday, two young men in a sedan approached a 13-year-old girl near Chaparral Elementary School in Ladera Ranch, Wilkey said. The girl told authorities the young men asked her to help them look for a missing puppy, and, when she declined, they offered her candy. She again declined and kept walking home. The girl described the vehicle as a white Infiniti, Wilkey said.

Though the incident in Rancho happened first, it was reported after the incident in Ladera.

In both situations, the driver was described as a white, teenage male with shaggy, light-colored hair, police said. That is where the similarity between the incidents ends, Wilkey said. The boy and the girl were re-interviewed Tuesday, and police patrolled the areas after school but didn’t find anything suspicious, she said.

There was no physical attempt to force the students into the vehicles, Wilkey said. Investigators believe that the incidents occurred and the reports are credible, Wilkey added, “but based on the information, we’re still really looking at it to see if it was pranks or determine whether or not there should be concern.”

She said officials do not think there is a threat to the community, but the investigation is active.

“We’ll work it until we’ve exhausted any possible leads that we have,” she said. “There’s going to be high visibility patrols in the area to make sure the kids feel safe.”