By David Zahniser
Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES — An 18-year-old man was killed and six people were injured in a hit-and-run crash outside a Starbucks in L.A.'s Chinatown neighborhood, authorities said Saturday.
Emergency personnel responded shortly before 12:45 a.m. to the scene of a collision at Broadway and Cesar Chavez Avenue, according to a bulletin from the Los Angeles Fire Department.
The rollover crash occurred when a vehicle traveling on Cesar Chavez collided with a car heading north on Broadway, according to Officer Kevin Terzes of the Los Angeles Police Department. The 18-year-old, who had been inside the car that was hit, was pronounced dead at a hospital, Terzes said.
Police did not name the man, but family members who gathered at the intersection Saturday evening identified him as Isaac Arellanes Jr ., a student at Rio Hondo College.
Isaac Arellanes Sr . said he and his son had both been trainees at Homeboy Industries, a renowned gang intervention and rehabilitation program, and had received their high school diplomas on the same day earlier this year. Since then, his son had been looking to become an electrician — and he had a young child of his own, Arellanes said.
“I was very proud of him. I was tough on my son,” he said, standing near a makeshift memorial lined with candles, flowers and balloons. “He was the one I worried about most.”
Family members who were gathered at the crash scene covered a bus kiosk with photos of Arellanes Jr . and shared a link to a GoFundMe page to pay for funeral expenses.
Six others involved in the crash were also taken to a hospital — two of them in critical condition, the other four with non-life-threatening injuries, said Los Angeles Fire Department spokesperson Margaret Stewart. Two had been trapped in a vehicle and were rescued by firefighters, she said.
Footage aired by KTLA-TV showed one of the two vehicles upside down on the sidewalk by the Starbucks’ outdoor patio area. The other car, on Cesar Chavez, was mangled at the curb.
A crew that responded to the crash lifted the upside-down vehicle using a crane, a video broadcast by KABC-TV showed.
Terzes, the police spokesperson, said the driver of the first vehicle had fled the scene and had not been apprehended.
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