Author name: CCAR Staff

LOS ANGELES >> Paul Walker’s daughter sued Porsche for wrongful death Monday, claiming the sports car that her father was in when he was killed suffered from numerous design defects.

The lawsuit filed by Meadow Rain Walker seeks unspecified damages for defects that her lawyers claim kept the actor trapped in the Porsche Carrera GT when it crashed and burst into flames in November 2013.

• PHOTOS: Actor Paul Walker’s life cut short in tragic Santa Clarita crash

Walker was on a break from filming the seventh film in the “Fast & Furious” franchise when he was killed. He was riding in the Carrera GT driven by friend and business associate Roger Rodas when the car spun out of control, struck three trees and burst into flames on a street in Santa Clarita, California.

The wrongful-death suit claims the car, which was marketed as a street-legal race car, lacked a proper stability control system and safeguards to protect occupants and keep it from catching fire after a collision.

“Absent these defects in the Porsche Carrera GT, Paul Walker would be alive today,” the lawsuit states.

An email sent to representatives of Porsche Cars North America was not immediately returned.

The 18-page lawsuit includes a detailed recounting of the crash and contends that the Porsche was traveling 63 to 71 mph when it spun out of control.

Investigators concluded the Porsche was going much faster — up to 94 mph — when it crashed.

The investigation by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and California Highway Patrol concluded that it was unsafe speed and not mechanical problems that caused the crash. That investigation was aided by engineers from Porsche, who evaluated the wreckage of the rare car.

Meadow Walker’s lawsuit contends Porsche didn’t include a stability control system in the Carrera GT model Rodas was driving but includes it in other models. It also claims the car lacked proper reinforcements in its doors and used rubber fuel lines that didn’t break free to prevent a fire in a crash.

Similar allegations of design and safety defects were included in a wrongful death lawsuit by Rodas’ widow, Kristine Rodas, that remains pending in a federal court in Los Angeles. Rodas was trained as a race car driver and was only driving 55 mph, according to his wife’s lawsuit. He left behind two young children when he died.

Walker, the star of the “Fast & Furious” film franchise, co-owned an auto racing team with Rodas named Always Evolving. Meadow Walker, 16, is the sole heir of his estate.

Walker’s two brothers helped complete action scenes in “Furious 7,” which earned more than $1.5 billion globally after it was released in April.

Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP

___

This story has been corrected to show the title of the latest film is “Furious 7” not “Fast & Furious 7.”

LOS ANGELES >> A Los Angeles area assemblyman said a bill signed Monday by Gov. Jerry Brown to create a public alert system aimed at tracking down hit-and-run drivers will make streets safer statewide.

AB 8 calls for “yellow alerts” showing details about a fleeing vehicle — such as color, make, model and license plate number — to be displayed on digital freeway and street signs. Such alerts are already used during kidnappings.

“We’re just ecstatic,” Assemblyman Mike Gatto told City News Service Monday afternoon, about 10 minutes after receiving the news from the governor’s staff.

“This will make our streets much more safe, will help a lot of grieving families get justice,” he said.

Gatto held a news conference outside Los Angeles City Hall earlier Monday to urge Brown to “do the right thing” and sign the bill, which is set to go into effect on Jan. 1.

Brown vetoed a similar bill last year, explaining to Gatto that he had concerns it would overburden the existing alert system. The governor had until Oct. 11 to decide whether to sign or veto the latest bill.

“I don’t think the system is too burdened,” Gatto said Monday, noting that freeway signs are being used to urge drivers statewide to conserve water amid an historic drought.

“We shouldn’t have to put up $50,000 rewards to try to catch somebody. We shouldn’t have to flier our neighborhoods,” Gatto said. “We should give law enforcement tools to try to catch somebody by crowdsourcing it, if you will.”

Gatto added his bill is “narrowly tailored” to ensure alerts are only sent out in areas near where the incidents occur and only if the collision resulted in serious injury or death.

Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Tamika Butler, who joined Gatto in urging Brown to sign the bill, said 150 people die each year due to hit-and-runs.

She noted a fatal hit-and-run in Highland Park earlier this month. Butler said she was eating dinner with friends in the area when she heard a crash, then saw a driver flee the scene.

The victim, Yolanda Lugo, died about a week later, while “we are still looking for the perpetrator of this crime,” Butler said. “The Assembly member is doing his part and now, we just ask the governor, please sign the bill and show all vulnerable users of the streets that the streets also belong to them.”

The Los Angeles City Council earlier this year approved standing rewards ranging from $1,000 to $50,000 aimed at generating leads to capture drivers who flee traffic collisions rather than stop to potentially render aid.

Facebook and Instagram went down Monday afternoon for the second time in less than a week. Left without an alternative, people took to Twitter to share their frustration and feign concern.

Are you reading this on a mobile device? Try using this link.

FONTANA >> Fontana police are still investigating the cause of a fatal traffic collision that killed a San Bernardino motorcyclist last week.

The unidentified 42-year-old rider died Thursday evening following the crash at Sierra and Summit avenues, according to a police report.

Just before 6 p.m. Thursday, police say the man was riding his 2014 black Harley Davidson motorcycle north on Sierra Avenue toward Summit Avenue. At the same time, a 79 year-old Rialto man driving a 1999 red Dodge Durango was stopped at the red light in the southbound left turn lane of Sierra Avenue to go east onto Summit Avenue.

When the driver of the Durango began to make the left turn, he was struck by the driver of the motorcycle in the intersection. The impact tossed the rider onto the asphalt.

Paramedics took the injured rider to a hospital where he later died. The driver of the Durango was not injured.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Fontana Police Department at 909-350-7740.

SEATTLE >> An amphibious tour vehicle and a charter bus carrying foreign college students collided on a busy Seattle bridge Thursday, killing four people and sending dozens to hospitals in a wreck that scattered crumpled metal and broken glass on the road.

Seattle Fire Chief Harold Scoggins said 12 people were in critical condition, and many others had minor injuries. The crash also involved two passenger cars.

Mayor Ed Murray said foreign students were on the charter bus, and efforts were being made to contact consulates. He had no other details.

Witnesses described hearing a loud screech before the wreck and then seeing injured people either lying on the pavement or wandering around in a daze.

Jahna Dyer, a registered nurse, said she was walking across the Aurora Avenue bridge when she came upon the scene, a mess of jumbled metal and glass.

Some victims were lying on the road, while others milled about seemingly in shock and falling down, she said.

Dyer jumped a railing separating the sidewalk from the roadway and helped stabilize an injured man’s neck. She said she also helped a woman who had a cut lip and glass in her eye.

“She was holding my hand and saying thank you,” she said.

John Mundell said he was at the south end of the bridge when the crash occurred.

“We could hear the screech and twisted metal. It was surreal,” he said, adding he saw what appeared to be a few dozen people on the ground. “I wanted to try to help. I felt helpless.”

One of the vehicles involved was an amphibious, military-style bus operated by a tour company called “Ride the Ducks.” The tours are known for exuberant drivers and guides who play loud music and quack through megaphones as they lead tourists around the city.

Seattle Fire Lt. Sue Stangl said emergency crews were quick to arrive at the scene and encountered several victims.

“When (firefighters) arrived a lot of people were running at them, obviously saying people needed help,” Stangl.

Northwest Hospital spokeswoman Karen Peck said her facility is one of at least six Seattle hospitals receiving patients. Three of the 15 patients being treated at Northwest were from one family, she said — men ages 60, 20 and 24.

Harborview Medical Center planned to treat up to 10 of the most seriously injured, spokeswoman Susan Gregg said.

The bridge was expected to be closed for hours as authorities investigated and cleared the wreckage, Stangl said.

The Aurora Avenue bridge carries Washington Highway 99, one of Seattle’s two primary north-south arterials, over Lake Union. It has three lanes in each direction and no barrier separating the north and southbound lanes.

While there was no immediate word about the cause of the crash, some noted the safety of the amphibious boats has been questioned before. Lawyer Steve Bulzomi represented a motorcyclist who was run over and dragged by a Ride the Ducks boat that came up behind him at a stoplight in downtown Seattle in 2011.

“These are military craft that were never designed to navigate narrow city streets,” Bulzomi said Thursday. “This is a business model that requires the driver to be a driver, tour guide and entertainer at the same time. It asks too much of the driver.”

In 2010, a barge plowed into an amphibious vessel packed with tourists that had stalled in the Delaware River in Philadelphia.

The crash sent all 37 people on the duck boat into the river, but 16-year-old Dora Schwendtner and 20-year-old Szabolcs Prem never resurfaced. The Hungarians were visiting the United States through a church exchange program; their families filed wrongful-death lawsuits.

A tug operator, Matt Devlin, eventually pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the crash. Devlin acknowledged the accident was caused largely by his continuous use of a cellphone and laptop computer while he was steering the barge.

In July, the family of a woman struck and killed by an amphibious tourist boat in Philadelphia filed a wrongful-death lawsuit.

Attorneys for Elizabeth Karnicki’s family allege the May 8 accident, which occurred during rush hour, was due in part to “huge blind spots” on the Ride The Ducks vehicle.

Associated Press writers Gene Johnson and Martha Bellisle in Seattle contributed to this report.

Kings general manager Dean Lombardi stood in front of the team last week, before training camp began at the Toyota Sports Center in El Segundo, and delivered a speech like none of the others he’s given in his long management career in the NHL.

Lombardi had a good deal of ground to cover in the wake of the arrest of Slava Voynov on a domestic violence charge last October and the drug busts of Jarret Stoll and Mike Richards during the offseason, and this was the time for a simple and direct message.

“We had a tough talk here last week, the hardest talk of my career with my team,” Lombardi told Kings beat reporters before Tuesday’s exhibition against the Arizona Coyotes at Staples Center. “It was hard enough to even decide to go in there. I agonized for a week.

“We’ve got to face it head on. I told them it’s not the time to be sensitive or politically correct right now. One thing about them, they’ve met every challenge they’ve ever faced and I have a feeling they’re going to meet this one, too. I believe we’re going to learn from it.”

Lombardi said he blamed himself for being caught unprepared for the off-ice issues of the last year. He said he missed the warning signs despite decades as a general manager with the Kings and the San Jose Sharks, as well as serving as a scout with the Philadelphia Flyers.

Richards’ arrest after a stop at the Canadian border was especially troubling for Lombardi, who counted the forward as one of the team’s leaders and a driving force in the Kings’ run to the franchise’s first Stanley Cup championship in 2012.

The Kings terminated Richards’ contract not long after he was stopped June 17 at the Emerson, Manitoba, border crossing, allegedly while in possession of a controlled substance without a prescription, reportedly Oxycontin. The players’ union has filed a grievance on his behalf.

“The first thing is the sense of trust, you know?” Lombardi said, speaking in general terms. “That’s the hardest part. One of the things we’ve been built here and I think why we were so successful was those values were in place.”

Speaking of Richards, Lombardi added, “I don’t know if I’ll ever get over it, quite frankly.”

Lombardi couldn’t speak about the details of Richards’ case, but promised to do so later. Richards has a court date in Canada in December. Lombardi said the cases of first Voynov and then Stoll and Richards prompted him to enact a series of off-ice initiative, including the hiring of former NHL player Brantt Myhres as a special consultant.

Myhres spoke to Lombardi several times about serving in a player-assistance capacity. Myhres played for six teams in the league, including for the Sharks while Lombardi was their GM. Myhres was suspended four times for positive drug tests, but has been sober for seven years.

“I think he came by three years ago,” Lombardi said. “He contacted me a number of times. Actually, reflecting back to some of the things he told me, I should have listened. Unfortunately, it takes something like that to open your eyes and wake up. He was ahead of the curve.”

UPLAND >> Two women are dead following a high-speed crash into a slope and a highway sign here Monday night.

The unidentified women in their 20s were pronounced dead at the scene, said Sgt. Cameron Broyles with the California Highway Patrol.

Around 10:15 p.m., the women were traveling east on the 10 Freeway near San Antonio Avenue in a white Scion reportedly at speeds of about 100 mph, when the driver made an unsafe lane change and struck a gray Chevrolet Malibu, he said.

That sent the Scion ricocheting toward the shoulder, where the vehicle was launched off a raised asphalt hill onto the hillside, officials said. The momentum of the impact into the hillside sent the Scion into the air a second time and into the pole that holds the highway message sign, officials said.

The Malibu driver, a 48-year-old man from Adelanto, suffered only minor injuries.

The fatal crash is still under investigation.

WHITTIER >> On a night that should have had Hun Joon “Paul” Lee eat birthday cake and open presents surrounded by family, Tuesday was one where about 500 people, mostly empathetic strangers, took part in a vigil honoring him.

The non-verbal autistic teen, who died aboard a school bus nearly two weeks ago, was celebrated for being a happy young man who was the center of his family.

Parents, a lot with special needs children accompanying them to the courtyard of Sierra Vista Center, spoke of their empathetic grief for the Lee family on the day of what would have been his 20th birthday.

“I was devastated,” said Sally Lunbeck, who was in attendance with her husband, Alan, and their daughter, Amber, who once rode Pupil Transportation Cooperative buses as a special needs student. “I can’t pretend to know what Paul’s family, especially his parents, are going through.”

They admitted to some “struggles” with PTC years ago, but on Tuesday night the Lunbecks, they said, were just one among many families to pay their respects and say a prayer for Lee.

He died after being left unattended for hours on a bus parked at a Whittier Union High School District parking lot leased to PTC. The death shocked the community and prompted action on initiating new safety measures aboard school buses.

PTC officials have confirmed there were two other students on the bus with Lee and that no adult aide was on the bus because the students’ Individualized Educational Plan stated none was required.

“It’s always a struggle to trust people to take care of your children,” Alan Lunbeck said, trusting they have the safety measures in place to do the job.”

Carlos Peralta, whose daughter, Ellie, 20, takes PTC buses to attend the same special needs transitional program as Lee was sad and angry about the teen’s death.

“How could something like this happen?” he asked. “Someone was supposed to be taking care of Paul. He was a good kid who should have gotten off that bus alive.”

A substitute driver, or “cover” driver, drove the bus carrying Lee, PTC officials said. Six cover drivers, who go through the same training as regular drivers but not may be up-to-date on the individual needs of each safety needs student they transport, work for PTC, which has a fleet of more than 100 buses that travel more than a million miles annually, officials said.

PTC admitted that the driver, who is on administrative leave, signed off on the bus being cleared.

An official cause of death for Lee has been deferred by the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner, pending the results of toxicology and other tests.

NORWALK >> Hundreds of mourners gathered in Norwalk Saturday to say their final farewells to a 19-year-old autistic student from Whittier who died after being left alone in a school bus last week.

The death of Hun Joon “Paul” Lee, who died after being left unattended for hours on a contracted school bus parked at a Whittier Union High School District parking lot, shocked the community and prompted renewed conversation about care for those with special needs.

Still reeling from the sudden and tragic manner in which Paul’s life was cut short, devastated family members hosted a funeral mass for the young man at St. Raphael Korean Catholic Center in Norwalk.

“I’m so thankful for everyone who loved and cared for him in his life, and I regret I wasn’t able to spend more time with him,” sister Eiden Lee said through tears.

• Photos: Funeral services for student Hun Joon “Paul” Lee

“Since the day of this tragic accident, and for the rest of my life, although it will be so very painful, I will make sure this horrific tragedy will not go unnoticed. I will make sure to live my life to the fullest for my dear brother.”

Loved ones sobbed as the young man’s casket, covered with a white cloth, was wheeled to the front of the sanctuary.

A doll depicting the character “Woody” from the animated “Toy Story” film series provided by the family was placed alongside Paul Lee in his casket.

In addition to his sister, Paul Lee is survived by father Sang Sik Lee and mother Eun Ha Lee.

The father thanked community members who have supported the Lee family and kept the Lee family in their prayers over the past week.

“Even though Hun Joon left us, through him we learned love, felt joy and were happy,” Sang Sik Lee said in Korean.

“Hun Joon went to heaven, but I hope that our society will care and share the love with people with special needs because they should not be ignored or disregarded. What happened to Hun Joon should not happen again,” the distraught father said.

“And lastly, I’m sorry that I couldn’t protect you,” he said. “I love you. I love you Paul.”

Funds to help the Lee family are being collected online through Sunday at www.gofundme.com/uh44mgbs.

Family and friends have also established a Facebook page titled “Justice for Paul, Safety for All!” to share their thoughts and memories about Paul Lee, as well as the ongoing investigation into his death on Sept. 11.

“My heart continues to break every day for Paul’s family,” Jinri Kim, who said she used to babysit Paul, wrote in the forum.

“Paul is honestly the most gentle and peaceful person I know. He always responded to my questions with a smile, and his gentleness always struck me as to how a person could be so pure and peaceful,” she wrote.

Paul loved drawing and watching a Korean cartoon about a baby dinosaur, Kim added.

“Paul was truly an angel on Earth — he has never hurt a single soul in his life, brought so much joy and peace to those around him, and now he’s making the society reflect on issues that have gone neglected for far too long,” Kim wrote.

“The way Paul has gone to heaven was truly horrendous and unjust, but I truly believe that Paul will bring a positive change to the safety protocols in schools for all children in the world. The Lee family has a long journey ahead. Please let us continue to carry this momentum and carry Paul in our hearts until significant measures are put in place to ensure safety for all children.”