Last Updated on December 20, 2017 by CCAR Staff
SANTA ANA – A driver involved in a high-speed crash in Irvine that left three people dead and another seriously injured was arrested Wednesday at his Rialto home and charged with murder, authorities said on Wednesday.
Jeremy Wayne Greenwood, 30, is facing three murder counts and felony driving-under-the-influence stemming from a July 1 crash on Harvard Avenue at Michelson Drive.
According to prosecutors, Greenwood was intoxicated while driving his 2015 Infiniti Q50 northbound on Harvard at approximately 85 miles per hour when he ran a red light at about 3 a.m. and struck a 2014 Hyundai Elantra traveling westbound on Michelson through the intersection on a green light.
The collision’s force caused the Elantra to spin out and go over a sidewalk, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office says.
Kasean Herrera, the Elantra’s 23-year-old driver, and passenger Jeremy Shankling, 24, died at the scene.
A second passenger in the Elantra, London Thibodeaux, 20, died at a hospital several days later, while a third passenger, a 20-year-old woman, suffered a traumatic brain injury and underwent multiple organ surgeries, the DA’s Office says.
Witnesses helped pull Greenwood from his car, authorities said.
Herrera and Shankling were close friends and UC Irvine graduates working as software engineers. Thibodeaux and the woman who survived the crash were UCI students.
Irvine detective, following a five-month investigation, took Greenwood into custody.
Previously, Greenwood was convicted of a DUI in Los Angeles, the DA’s Office says. As part of that conviction, Greenwood was warned that if he was involved in a future DUI that resulted in a death, he could be charged with premeditated murder as opposed to the lesser charge of manslaughter.
If convicted, Greenwood, being held on $2 million bail, faces up to 51 years to life in state prison.
