Allegedly Drunk Driver Hits Parked Car on PCH Killing Man

A man was killed, and the woman sitting next to him was injured, as they sat in a parked car at a beach along Pacific Coast Highway and a pickup truck smashed into their small sedan.

The driver of the GMC Sierra pickup truck was arrested for suspicion of drunken driving, Sgt. Matthew Gunn told City News Service. The driver’s name was not immediately released.

The crash, at 6:22 a.m., crumpled a Honda Civic sedan and caused it to roll over and come to a rest at the lip of an embankment above the beach. The GMC Sierra pickup truck then flipped and barreled into a second parked vehicle, also a pickup.

The man and woman in that second vehicle were not hurt, they told a City News Service reporter. It was not known how badly injured the woman in the Honda was, or if the apparently-errant driver was hurt.

The GMC Sierra driver apparently either fell asleep, or was distracted, when the pickup drifted over the fog line and into the parked cars, deputies at the scene told a CNS reporter.

Coincidentally, the crash was at nearly the precise same spot where Bruce Jenner’s SUV ran into the back of a car that had stopped in heavy beach- related traffic, on Feb. 7. Kimberly Howe, 69, was killed in that crash.

No charges have been filed against the SUV driver, now known as Caitlyn Jenner, but two lawsuits allege that Jenner caused the crash by violating California’s basic speed law and driving too fast for conditions.

Today’s crash closed eastbound PCH at Corral Canyon Road, with traffic headed east from the Point Dume area diverted to a 35-mile detour on foggy mountain roads. The road was reopened to two-way traffic at 9:45, and all lanes were reopened by noon.

It was the fourth major crash and road closure on PCH in western Malibu this month. The road was closed near Paradise Cove last Wednesday, when a head- on crash left one driver near death.

Last Saturday, PCH was closed for hours when two fire trucks and a sheriff’s squad car were each involved in separate crashes within a quarter mile of each other at the same time, in heavy beach traffic just west of today’s crash scene.

And a pedestrian was struck and killed on Zuma Beach on June 2.

At today’s crash, paramedics were dispatched at 6:23 a.m., according to a Los Angeles County Fire Department dispatcher.

At least one person had to be extricated from a vehicle, he said.

The crash was about 300 feet east of the traffic signal at Corral Canyon Road and Pacific Coast Highway -- at an area where people park their vehicles and head for the beach at nearly all hours.

City News Service