19-year-old arrested in North Hills DUI crash that killed 3

ByABC7.com staff KABC logo
Monday, August 10, 2015
19-year-old arrested in North Hills DUI crash that killed 3
A 19-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated Sunday following a collision that left three men dead in North Hills.

NORTH HILLS, LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- A 19-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated Sunday following a collision that left three men dead in North Hills, police said.

The two-vehicle collision involving a Toyota Corolla and a Jeep Liberty occurred in the 8300 block of N. Haskell Avenue at 2:45 a.m. At least one person had to be extricated from a vehicle, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department.

Officer Norma Eisenman says three of four men in the Corolla were killed and the fourth was hospitalized in critical condition. Eisenman says all were men in their 20s.

Riley Holman, the 19-year-old driver of the Jeep Liberty, was transported to a local hospital in critical condition, but his condition was upgraded Sunday morning. Holman was arrested on suspicion of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated.

After the initial collision, the Toyota Corolla spun out and hit a Honda Accord. The driver of the Honda Accord suffered minor injuries.

Mark Kilgrow of the Los Angeles Police Department said officers were planning to reconstruct the accident to find an exact cause.

"We're going to reconstruct this accident because of the three fatalities and so we're going to do a full evaluation of speed, and that's part of that reconstruction of the accident is to find out what speed caused it," Kilgrow said. "If you look at the cars, there's very significant damage to both cars and so we know that speed could be a factor based on all the damage to the vehicles."

Haskell Avenue was closed at Roscoe Boulevard during the hours-long investigation.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.