SAN DIEGO — Officials have identified the second of two passengers killed in a crash onto Torrey Pines State Beach earlier this week.
Johnny Ildefonzo Punzalan was riding without a seatbelt in the sports car that hit a guardrail and then plunged onto the sand off North Torrey Pines Road Monday night, the San Diego County Medical Examiner said. Officials identified another 19-year-old passenger killed in the crash, Joshua Adonai Manzanares, earlier this week.
Officials say Punzalan and Manzanares were two of five people in the car, including the driver, and that both were thrown from the vehicle at the time of the crash. The young men, who were both from Lake Elsinore, were pronounced dead at the scene.
None of the other three people, aged between 18 and 19 years old, have been publicly named. Of the three, two were hospitalized with serious injuries and one, the driver, had only minor injuries, according to police.
Authorities have not officially ruled what caused the driver to lose control of the car, a Subaru WRX sedan. However, investigators said earlier this week that they suspect DUI was a factor and that “the speed was excessive.”
“We have two people that have lost their lives,” San Diego Police Lt. Adam Sharki told FOX 5. “We have two people who are dead and shouldn’t be. We have three people who are in the hospital and if this is something that was preventable, that just makes it all the more tragic.”
“People can kind of infer how fast that vehicle was going to leave the roadway, to land as far as it did from the roadway and with the kind of damage it had to it,” Sharki added.
FOX 5’s Dillon Davis contributed to this report.