Woman hit, killed by 2 cars in Huntington Beach ID'd 27 years later

ByABC7.com staff KABC logo

Friday, May 12, 2017

Woman hit, killed by 2 cars in OC ID'd 27 years later

A woman killed 27 years ago while crossing Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach was identified by authorities.

SANTA ANA, Calif. (KABC) -- A woman struck and killed by two vehicles 27 years ago in Huntington Beach has been identified, officials announced Thursday morning.

The Orange County Sheriff's Department Coroner's Division confirmed the woman's identify as 26-year-old Andrea Kuiper of Fairfax, Virginia.

Authorities said Andrea Kuiper was struck by two vehicles as she was crossing Pacific Coast Highway on April 1, 1990.

"It was a very tragic death. Not that most of them aren't, this was just particularly tragic because she was just crossing the street in Huntington Beach," Kelly Keyes, supervising deputy coroner said.

Investigators said the woman didn't have any identification on her. The only clues they had to go by were her clothes.

"They believed she was from Virginia, although someone said possibly from Newport in Virginia, which wasn't entirely accurate, and that she said she was adopted," Keyes explained.

Andrea Kuiper's information was provided to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at the time of her death, officials said. NCMEC recreated images of what Andrea Kuiper may have looked like and the images were distributed to the media.

A sketch released of an unidentified woman who was hit and killed by two cars in Huntington Beach on April 1, 1990. She was later identified as Andrea Kuiper, 26, of Virginia.

Investigators said the creation of the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System in 2010, and it's partnership with the FBI in March 2017 to check fingerprints, helped lead to Andrea Kuiper's identification.

"Instead of looking at a 10-print system with all 10 fingers, there were looking at them individually, which is more like they would do at a crime scene," Keyes detailed.

Investigators got a hit when her fingerprints matched the ones taken when she applied for a job at the Department of Agriculture just three years before her death.

"It was one of those once in a career type moments to know that Andrea was Andrea," Keyes described.

After Andrea Kuiper was identified on May 4, investigators worked to locate her parents to tell them about the discovery.

"We are thankful to know what happened to our daughter after all these years," her father Richard Kuiper said in a written release. "Andrea was loved and respected. She was beautiful. But she was manic depressive, and therefore we had been through quite an adventure."