A 16-year-old girl who was involved in a car crash that killed four other teenagers in April has been charged with misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter, the Marin County District Attorney’s Office confirmed to ABC News.
The teen driver was charged with misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter without gross negligence, along with two violations: driving at an unsafe speed and violating the provisional license program, prosecutors confirmed to ABC News on Thursday.
“This is an unimaginable tragedy for everyone involved,” the teen’s attorney, Charles Dresow, told ABC News on Thursday.
This screenshot from a video shows a memorial to the four teenagers who died in a head-on car crash in April in Marin County, California.
KGO
On April 18, at approximately 7:25 p.m., the teenage suspect was allegedly driving between 60 and 65 mph in a 40 mph zone, made an “unsafe turning motion” and drove the car off the road into a large redwood tree, according to a California Highway Patrol report that was obtained by San Francisco station ABC. KGO and has not been made public.
Once the car hit the tree, the force of the impact caused the rear of the vehicle “to lift off the ground and the roof of the vehicle to impact the tree,” according to the CHP report. After the accident, the car “came to rest on its wheels against the redwood” and caught fire, according to the report.
Due to the force of the accident, the driver and one passenger were seriously injured, and the other four passengers suffered fatal injuries, according to the report.
The report revealed that all of the teens had met in downtown Fairfax, California, and were headed to the home of one of the passengers to spend the night when the accident occurred.
The cause of the accident was determined to be the speed at which the car was traveling, the “unsafe turning motion,” and the driver’s limited time on her license; Officials said he “probably lacked the experience to safely handle these high-speed road conditions,” according to the report.
In this screenshot from a video, a person places flowers at a memorial for the four teenagers who died in a head-on car crash in April in Marin County, California.
KGO
There was no evidence that the driver was under the influence of alcohol or drugs at the time of the crash, according to the report.
Due to the “extensive thermal damage sustained to the interior of the vehicle, it could not be determined whether other airbags had deployed,” but the highway patrol said there were “no pre-collision conditions found that would have caused or contributed to the collision.”
The teen’s next court appearance is scheduled for December 3 at 1:30 p.m. local time, Dresow told ABC News.
