Author name: C-CAR

UPLAND >> At least three people, including two pregnant women, were injured in a multi-vehicle crash involving a jack-knifed tractor trailer on the eastbound 10 Freeway at Mountain Avenue Wednesday morning, according to the California Highway Patrol.

• Video: Big rig crash backs up traffic for miles

The crash was reported just after 7:30 a.m. prompting authorities to issue a SigAlert for the area, according to the CHP incident log. Traffic was backed up for miles on both sides of the freeway.

• PHOTOS: 3 injured in Montclair crash

Several paramedic units were requested for injured motorists, however it appeared most of the injuries were minor.

All but one lane of the freeway, including the carpool lane, were blocked for about two hours as CHP officers and rescue personnel tended to the crash. There were reports drivers were using the right-hand emergency lane to get around the large collision.

Traffic was backed up to Fairplex in Pomona as well as to the Ontario area on the westbound lanes of the freeway.

WASHINGTON >> The Associated Press has learned that two Americans presumed to have died in the plane crash in the southern French Alps include a U.S. government contractor and her daughter.

The mother was identified as Yvonne Selke of Nokesville, Virginia, a longtime and highly regarded employee of Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. in Washington, and her grown daughter, whose name was not immediately available. Selke worked with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s satellite mapping office, according to a person close to the family. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because this person was not authorized to release information to reporters.

A person who answered the phone at Selke’s home said the family was not providing any information.

A Booz Allen spokeswoman declined to comment, noting that Germanwings had not yet disclosed identities of the crash victims.

HALTERN, Germany >> A stunned German town mourned 16 students who went down aboard Germanwings Flight 9525 on their way home Tuesday from a Spanish exchange, while the opera world grieved for two singers who were returning from performing in Barcelona — one of them with her baby.

“This is surely the blackest day in the history of our town,” a visibly shaken Mayor Bodo Klimpel said after the western town of Haltern was shocked by news that 16 students from the local high school and two teachers had been on the plane. They had just spent a week in Spain.

Some hugged, cried and laid flowers in front of the Joseph Koenig High School, where the 10th graders had studied, and lit candles on its steps.

• Photos: Passenger jet carrying 150 people crashes in the French Alps

“This is pretty much the worst thing you can imagine,” Klimpel said at a hastily called news conference.

An announcement was made to students Tuesday lunchtime that “that we were all free now but we shouldn’t be happy,” said Christopher Schweigmann, 16, a 10th-grade student who said he lost two good friends. Students went to a service Tuesday evening, and “everyone was in tears in the church,” he said.

“It’s impossible to believe that they all won’t be there anymore in the coming days,” he said.

Crisis counselors were at the school soon after the crash.

“I think many haven’t really grasped what happened, and I think the grief will come a bit later for many,” counselor Ingo Janzen said.

“The town is totally silent, nothing is happening anymore in town, everyone is like petrified,” said resident Gerd Schwarz, 64.

The town of 38,000 lies about 80 kilometers (50 miles) northeast of the plane’s destination, Duesseldorf.

Officials confirmed that the school group was among the 150 people on board the plane. Among the victims were also two opera singers, business travelers en route to a trade fair in Cologne and two babies.

A total of 67 Germans, many Spaniards, two Australians, and one person each from the Netherlands, Turkey, and Denmark were among the victims, according to their respective governments.

Spanish authorities were still trying to determine how many of their citizens were on board. The Mexican government said there were indications that one Mexican national was also among the victims.

The German students and their teachers spent a week in Llinars del Valles and were seen off at the town’s train station early Tuesday by their Spanish host families, said Pere Grive, the deputy mayor of the town of 9,000, about a 45-minute drive from Barcelona.

German and Spanish students from the two towns have been doing such exchanges for at least 15 years. The Spanish students had spent time in Germany in December.

“We are completely shattered and the students are also devastated,” Grive told The Associated Press.

In Haltern, the high school was going to be kept open Wednesday but no classes were planned.

“There will be an opportunity for the students to talk about the terrible event,” Klimpel said.

Also among the passengers were two German singers who had been in Barcelona to perform in Richard Wagner’s “Siegfried” at the city’s Gran Teatre del Liceu — Duesseldorf-born contralto Maria Radner and bass baritone Oleg Bryjak, who was born in Kazakhstan but had been a member since 1996 of the ensemble at Duesseldorf’s Deutsche Oper am Rhein opera house.

“We have lost a great performer and a great person in Oleg Bryjak. We are stunned,” said Christoph Meyer, director of Deutsche Oper am Rhein.

Radner took the Germanwings flight with her husband and baby, Liceu director of communications Joan Corbera said. He added that the theater’s employees will hold two minutes of silence on Wednesday in the singers’ honor.

Also traveling on the plane with her baby was Marina Bandres, who came from Jaca in the Spanish Pyrenees and lived in Britain, Jaca Mayor Victor Barrio said. Bandres had been attending a funeral in Jaca for a relative.

Business travelers included Carles Milla, the managing director for a small Spanish food machinery company, his office said, adding that he had been on his way to a food technology fair in Cologne. Two employees of Barcelona’s trade fair organization were also on the flight.

Catalonia’s regional leader, Artur Mas, said the government would arrange transportation for families who want to view the crash site but did not say when the visit would take place.

At Barcelona airport, passenger Marcel Hemmeldr said he felt “very strange” to check in for Germanwings’ evening flight to Duesseldorf.

“The people were standing at the same place where we’re standing now … now they’re not there anymore. So it’s a strange feeling, a really strange feeling,” he said. “I feel sorry for everybody in Germany. All the people there who have lost some family members.”

Dorothee Thiesing and Martin Meissner in Haltern, David Rising and Geir Moulson in Berlin, Jorge Sainz and Ciaran Giles in Madrid, Joseph Wilson in Barcelona, and Mike Corder in The Hague contributed to this report.

SANTA ANA >> Charges were filed Tuesday against four people accused in a dine-and-dash at an Anaheim-area restaurant that ended with a waitress getting run over in the parking lot as they drove off.

Rowshaid Cordell Pellum, 24, of Cerritos, was charged with aggravated assault and hit-and-run with injury, both felonies, and a misdemeanor count of defrauding an innkeeper. Co-defendants Santeea Munay Ralph, 23, Shyteice Lashay Miles, 19, and Markeisha Michelle Williams, 18, all of Long Beach, were each charged with a misdemeanor count of defrauding an innkeeper.

Pellum faces up to four years and eight months in prison if convicted, while the women would face up to six months in jail.

Pellum and Ralph were scheduled to be arraigned this afternoon. Arraignment for the other two defendants has yet to be scheduled.

The hit-and-run occurred at 6:22 p.m. Sunday at the Mexico Lindo restaurant in the 10900 block of Magnolia Street. The four patrons left without paying, prompting their 28-year-old server to follow them out to the parking lot to confront them, sheriff’s Lt. Jeff Hallock said.

As the suspects drove away in a black Volkswagen Jetta, the waitress was struck by the sedan and knocked down, he said.

Maria Uriostegui, a mother of two, was taken to an area hospital with what Hallock described as “minor to moderate” injuries.

Uriostegui told reporters after being released from the hospital that she had a feeling the group was going to walk out on their bill.

“When they got there, there was just something that — I just had a feeling that something was not going to work out at the end of them having lunch,” she said. “And I kept kind of a close eye on them because I just had that sense. And yes, they just walked out and I went to tell them, ‘I’m sorry you guys forgot to pay your bill.’ They, the four of them, turned around, looked at me, laughed and just kept walking to their car.”

She said she was hoping to jot down the license plate number, but the car had no plates.

About 1 a.m. Monday, deputies patrolling in the Stanton area saw a black Volkswagen sedan in the parking lot of a Motel 6 in the 7400 block of Katella Avenue, Hallock said.

“It was just great police work, a great observation on their part” to spot the Jetta, he said.

Deputies talked to the motel manager, and the residents connected to the Jetta matched the victim’s descriptions of the suspects, who were arrested without incident, Hallock said.

POMONA >> Two men were arrested for suspicion of possession of methamphetamine and felony evading Monday after leading police on a high-speed chase and crashing into a parked car in Pomona.

David Delayo, 24, of Pomona and Joseph Delayo, 21, of Baldwin Park were behind bars tonight after being arrested in the area of Towne Avenue and Second Street sometime after 2 p.m. after they slammed into a parked car as they tried to run from police, according to Pomona police Sgt. Lena Becker.

It’s unclear at this point whether the two Delayos are related or which one of them was driving.

The incident began just before 2 p.m. in the area of San Antonio and La Verne avenues when gang detectives from the Major Crimes Unit saw the driver of the Delayos’ vehicle commit a traffic violation, Becker said. The detectives tried to stop the vehicle but the driver refused to stop and fled from the scene.

As the driver tried to outrun police, the passenger allegedly threw drugs out of the window, according to Becker. Those substances allegedly turned out to be methamphetamine, according to police.

Ultimately, the driver slammed his car into a parked car and the two men were taken into custody, Becker said.

The two men were booked on a number of charges including felony evading, possession of dangerous narcotics for sale and destruction of evidence, according to Becker.

David Delayo, who has at least nine previous arrests for various charges since March 2013, was being held in lieu of $75,000 bail. Joseph Delayo’s bail was set at $30,000. Both men are headed to Pomona Superior Court, Dept. A, on Wednesday morning to be arraigned.

My memory of lessons in school about the Great Depression goes something like this: “It began in 1929 when everyone lost their money in the stock market, the banks closed and everyone got food in bread lines until World War II.”

Most of what I really learned as a youth about the Depression came from my parents’ stories of unemployment, of shooting rabbits for food in the fields of Kansas, and listening to President Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats.

Those who suffered through it will never forget it, even as it fades into the history books.

On Oct. 29, 1929, the New York stock market crashed, and fortunes mostly built on speculation evaporated in the blink of any eye.

Three thousand miles away in the Inland Valley, there was hardly panic about the effects of Black Tuesday.

On the Oct. 29, the evening Pomona Progress-Bulletin reported that the Union Church of Narod (part of latter-day Montclair) had met to prepare for the Halloween party. The ladies had made avocado ice cream for dessert.

La Verne was planning its Armistice Day program, while everyone in the area was talking about a sheriff’s deputy being beaten in Redlands by several youths when he tried to breakup illegal drinking in those Prohibition days.

The fact was that in October 1929, even though local papers carried huge headlines about the crash, relatively few in the rural Inland Empire — like my parents — owned stock.

The first real indication of concern locally may have been an ad in newspapers by Ford Motor Co. on Nov. 1.

“Effective today, prices of Ford cars and trucks will be reduced,” said a statement of the firm’s confidence in prosperity (and perhaps recognition of the impending troubles). The full price of a Ford Town Car was cut from $1,400 to $1,200. A Tudor Sedan fell $20 to $530.

Local business leaders shrugged off what happened in New York by saying it would have little effect in the Inland Empire, where a strong business climate was bolstered by an expansive agricultural industry.

The Progress-Bulletin editorialized on Nov. 2 that the stock market crash was actually a good thing. Investors have sold their holdings and will now be able to use the money to invest in other things, like Southern California land. The only flaw in that logic was most speculators sold stocks for next to nothing and were wiped out.

A couple of days later, the newspapers offered some more down-to-earth advice to those worried about crash: “. . .Speculation is a very doubtful game … It’s far better to invest in real estate in the Pomona valley.”

The luckiest man in all of this was Ontario banker Oscar Arnold because nobody remembers the speech he gave on that Oct. 29. Bank deposits are higher than ever, he said, and good things will come from the stock market crash.

“A few more jolts on the New York stock market will be a boon to real estate,” the Ontario Daily Report quoted him. There’s no record of his thoughts on how the economy did in subsequent years.

On Oct. 30, Daily Report editor Crombie Allen agreed with Arnold’s views, saying the crash should “have a wholesome effect on business as a whole. People will return to the safe and sure way of investing in real estate and other local offerings.”

That is, if they had a dime to call their own.

TEMPE, Ariz. — Jon Wilhite was always a baseball kid. He grew up in Manhattan Beach in the 1980s playing catcher. Mike Scioscia was his favorite player, naturally.

Eventually Wilhite became a star at Mira Costa High School and a valuable player off the bench for some powerful Cal State Fullerton teams from 2005-07. The Dodgers’ Justin Turner and the Angels’ Vinnie Pestano were among his teammates, as was veteran major league catcher Kurt Suzuki.

These days, Wilhite works with his father, Tony, who is an expert in the logistics of shipping large freights. Jon, 30, is already an expert in lifting heavy burdens himself.

Wilhite was the lone survivor of the 2009 car crash that killed Angels pitcher Nick Adenhart and two others. “Internally decapitated” was his medical diagnosis. Miraculously, thanks to the swift and diligent work of doctors at UCI Medical Center, Wilhite survived.

“I forget the odds,” Pestano said, getting emotional as he flashed back, “but the odds of him making it out of the hospital with that injury, it was pretty crazy.”

Wilhite’s story neither begins nor ends there. Monday, he will have a uniform hanging in the Angels’ locker room with a familiar number 5 on the back, the same number he wore at Fullerton. Wilhite will be in Arizona all week as a “guest instructor” in the Angels’ spring training camp.

The idea was Scioscia’s.

“Sosh mentioned it to me multiple times: ‘You need to come out to spring training,’” said Wilhite, who attended about 15 to 20 Angels games last year by his own estimate. “Tim (Mead, the Angels’ vice president of communications) said, ‘You better take him up on this.’”

The choice was easy. Pestano said Wilhite “is going to have baseball in his blood the rest of his life,” and he should know. They were roommates at Cal State Fullerton.

Pestano was pitching for the Cleveland Indians’ Double-A affiliate in Akron, Ohio, in 2009. The morning after the accident, his cell phone was flooded with voicemails. Adenhart had already been pronounced dead at the hospital.

“First thing, I called Jon’s phone. There was no answer,” Pestano recalled. “So I tried to get a hold of anybody I could, because people just knew he was in an accident. Some people said he didn’t make it.”

That day coincided with a day game for Akron, followed by a day off, followed by a night game. Pestano flew to California at night and visited Wilhite in the hospital. He flew back in time to rejoin his teammates in the middle of their night game, all with the Indians’ blessing.

“Even just to think about it now, to go back,” — Pestano paused — “but to know his family, they were awesome through the whole process. They were rocks for other family members and friends. I’m sure they had moments on their own terms, but in front of everybody else, they were just the same people you’ve known for years and years and years, making sure everybody around them was all right and taken care of.”

Pestano’s career progressed as any baseball player would dream: Triple-A in 2010. A full-time major-league job with the Indians in 2011. He was traded to the Angels in August.

Conventional wisdom holds that around 15 percent of all players drafted will some day reach the major leagues. Wilhite’s odds of living and breathing were way longer — longer even than the scar running down the back of his neck, where doctors reconnected his skull to his vertebra.

He began his outpatient rehab at a center for brain injury patients in Orange, commuting two hours each direction from Temecula. Because of an issue with his vision, Wilhite would sit in the passenger seat wearing a blindfold the length of the trip.

It wasn’t until Suzuki invited Wilhite to train with him one off-season that Wilhite noticed the most progress in his rehab.

“I felt like one of the guys again instead of a patient,” he said.

Wilhite’s neck is still limited, but otherwise his body fits the definition of a full recovery. He works out three or four days a week and jogs on the beach. Recently, he took a couple cuts at the plate at a Mira Costa High alumni game.

“He just sent me the video the other day,” Pestano said.

If there’s one area where Wilhite yearns for more, it’s finding a place in the game he loves. He watches MLB Network “24-7,” he says.

Using a specially modified car to get around, he’ll attend as many Angels games as a Manhattan Beach commute allows during the season, which typically means weekend games only.

Pestano said Wilhite occasionally made the ultimate reverse commute — Anaheim to Cleveland — to watch him pitch once he reached the majors.

On a roster full of stars at Fullerton, some of whom never reached the majors, Wilhite was not a star. He knows he got the most out of his career as a player. But he still has plenty to offer as a teammate, which is why the Angels manager didn’t hesitate to give Wilhite a uniform.

“His love for baseball is incredible,” Scioscia said. “He’s great with people. Great work ethic. We’re happy to have him work with (bullpen coach) Steve Solis and understand some of the coaching principles involved.”

Besides Pestano, only a few familiar faces remain in the Angels’ clubhouse. Pitcher Jered Weaver is one; he visited Wilhite in the hospital not long after the accident and they’ve chatted on occasion over the years. He called the spring training invitation a “no-brainer.”

“Obviously Nick was real close to our family,” Weaver said, “and Jon was real close to Nick.”

Wilhite probably wouldn’t have a locker in the Angels’ clubhouse if not for his eternal link to Adenhart. But he would have friends there and, maybe, a place in the game somewhere.

If that wasn’t clear to Wilhite before this week, it will be by the end.

“I couldn’t be more excited to be back on a ball field,” he said. “It feels like home.”

Martin Truex Jr., driver of the Furniture Row Racing Chevorlet, shares his thoughts through the NASCAR weekend at Auto Club Speedway.

If someone had told me after our final practice on Saturday that we would finish eighth, I would have said we’ll take it and let’s go home.

• DRIVER DIARY: Martin Truex Jr. not quite dialed in — yet

• MORE COVERAGE: Check out our Auto Club 400 page

We were way off after Saturday’s final practice but came out on race day and did what we needed to do. I am proud of the guys for going to work Saturday night and not being afraid to take a big swing at the setup. To go out there and run with a completely different setup than we had Friday and Saturday and come away with our fifth straight top-10 really says something about this team. We never give up and believe in each other. As mad as I was with the pit crew today I still feel they are good and we’ll get it right.

We were all over the map in track position and it appeared that we had a top-five locked as were running fifth until the final caution came out to send the race into the second green-white-checkered restart. On that last restart I wasn’t in the best spot and lost some ground (from fifth to eighth), but on the previous restart I was able to make a good gain in track position (from ninth to fifth).

• BREWSTER: A-to-Z breakdown of NASCAR Week in Fontana

• PHOTOS: Soldout crowd enjoys NASCAR race in Fontana

But considering all the obstacles that we had to contend with this weekend, I am happy with the finish. It appears that the tire test we conducted here last fall actually hurt us because we came here thinking what we needed to have based on that test. It turned out we didn’t have the proper setup until Saturday night. I just wish we could have started the weekend with the tune-up that we had on race day.

Five races into the season and we have not finished lower than eighth. That’s the kind of start when the adrenalin picks up a few paces. We’re having fun and just need to keep it going and try to improve each week.

The five top-10s we have this season equals the number of top 10s we had all of last year. And I was also told that I equaled a personal best of scoring five straight top 10s. All I can say is all is good at Furniture Row Racing and we’re ready to hit the short track in Martinsville next week.

FONTANA >> Brian Vickers is out of a race car for at least three months.

The 31-year-old NASCAR Sprint Cup driver will be on blood-thinning medicine until then after suffering small blood clots on Thursday during his flight to Southern California. He said he had pain level of “10” during the flight. He went to the UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica where the clots were confirmed.

“I spent half the flight trying to convince myself I bumped into something,” he said on Sunday. “Right now it’s not too bad. It’s probably a 1. Pretty much all of the pain is gone. A day or two ago, it was a 5.”

• WINNER’S CIRCLE: Keselowski wins Auto Club 400

• MORE COVERAGE: Check out our Auto Club 400 page

He had previously not been on blood-thinning medicine and he cannot race while on the medication. Brett Moffitt raced in his place for the Michael Waltrip Racing team in Sunday’s Auto Club 400.

Vickers first experienced blood clotting issues in 2010. He also has had heart surgery to fix a hole.

He admits it is not the first time he has wondered what the clots will do to his future in racing.

“Am I worried? Of course.” he said. “Have I given up hope? No.

“In these three months I’ll try to figure out what makes sense and a plan that works. That is so far away right now. I’ll never give up, but if it comes to that, I’ll go to the next thing in life. I’ll keep fighting. You never know what tomorrow holds.”

• PHOTOS: Soldout crowd enjoys NASCAR race in Fontana

Vickers has been a big proponent of blood clot awareness; Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series race was called the Drive4Clots.com 300.

“This is not quite how I want to raise awareness for clots, but there we are,” he said. “I love racing more than any other activity that I do. It’s not who I am. It is something I do, something I love to do. But there is more than life than this.

“If I am able to race I do not want be anywhere else than with (the Waltrip team). I have been very blessed to be in the 55 Camry. I really love that team and it has become a home for me.”

Shav Glick winner

Tommy Kendall, one of the best road racer ever to emerge from Southern California, was selected as the winner of the Justice Brothers Shav Glick Award, presented to an regional individual who has made significant to the sport.

Kendall was a four-time SCCA Trans-Am driver who dominated the mid-90s, is the 17th winner in the 16-year history of the award named for the highly-respected motorsports writer for the L.A. Times, who died in 2008. There was tie in 2006 between Phil Hill and Carroll Shelby

“It’s quite incredible with all the history behind it,” Kendall said. “(Former winners) Parnell Jones and Dan Gurney were my heroes before I got into racing and were my heroes when I was in the sport. When I was 19, Dshave wrote a piece on me.

“I’m very grateful for that light, he was a real gentleman and great journalist who is missed by those in the sport.”

No second date

ACS president Dave Allen doesn’t think NASCAR is considering a return of a second Cup date as the track once had. But, Zallen said, “as a promoter, I wouldn’t turn down a second race.”

Kevin Harvick would, if he had a voice. He was very specific about racing a second time in many NASCAR markets.

“I think some markets are just one-race markets. I would say ninety percent of them are one-race markets, but a lot of them still have two race,” Harvick said of the situation.  “You just see those mediocre crowds and I think when people know that you’re only coming one time a year, you have to go to that one particular race.

“I think this race track is a great example of a lot of lessons that a lot of people obviously don’t pay attention to that run race tracks. Sometimes, if you take one really great thing and you can really easily make them into two mediocres, and we do that all the time in our sport.”

• BREWSTER: A-to-Z breakdown of NASCAR Week in Fontana

Pit stops

With his eighth-place finish, Martin Truex Jr. extended his record streak for Furniture Row Racing. It was his fifth straight top-10 finish, equaling his career-best, and also tied the number of top 10s he record all of 2014. … There were no post-race inspection issues. However, NASCAR will further inspect the cars of Brad Keselowski and Kevin Harvick at it R&D Center in Charlotte, N.C., and the tires of the Ryan Newman, Harvick, Paul Menard and Kurt Busch cars. … Matt Kenseth went from leading the race on lap 185 to getting a pass back on the lead lap eight laps later after breaking a rear axle following a pit stop. Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Carl Edwards was the highest-finishing Toyota driver, 13th. … Stewart-Haas Racing cars were second (Harvick) and third (Kurt Busch). Tony Stewart finished 14th in his best showing of the year and Danica Patrick 19th … Chino Hills’ David Gilliland started 43rd but finished 35th, a lap behind the winner. … Jimmie Johnson finished ninth and Jeff Gordon 10th, giving the state three drivers in the top 10 of the seven from California.