Judge Delays Sentencing to Visit Deadly Beach Campsite

A Vista Superior Court judge will visit a stretch of roadway at San Onofre State Beach Park before he sentences the man convicted of running over and killing two sleeping teen-agers who were camped there.

Douglas Freels, a 24-year-old Bellflower warehouseman, pleaded guilty in May to two counts of motor vehicle manslaughter with gross negligence in a plea bargain in which counts of felony drunk driving and felony hit and run were dropped.

Judge Herbert Hoffman on Monday granted a delay until July 29 in sentencing Freels and said that he would meet with defense and prosecuting attorneys to schedule a visit to the beach park to determine whether Freels’ version of the September accident is credible.

According to Deputy Probation Officer Don Hull, Freels admitted colliding with a truck in the park at the northwestern corner of Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base but denied knowing that he had run over a dome tent in which Amanda Ciskowski, 19, of San Diego and Graham Grubb, 18, of Laguna Niguel lay sleeping.

Hoffman could give a more lenient sentence if he concludes that Freels didn’t realize he had hit the two before he fled the scene.

In a statement, Freels recounted driving with a friend, John Herrera, the night of the accident. “I then remember hearing the brakes, covering my face, and hoping that we would miss the truck,” Freels wrote.

“We both thought that the owner of the truck was down on the beach and would come up any second or that someone would have heard the accident. We yelled for a few minutes and still no one came. We felt we should look for help, then we noticed the freeway sign. It was the only thing that looked like civilization in the black nothingness that surrounded us,” the statement continued.

Freels and Herrera told authorities that they had gone to the beach park and sat on the bluffs above the ocean, talking and drinking beer and whiskey.

The fatal accident occurred early Sept. 9, when Freels and his friend were seeking an exit to get back on Interstate 5. Freels was driving when he crossed to the wrong side of the old highway, went off the roadway, striking the tent in which the teen-agers were sleeping and then hitting their truck.

After the accident, the two men abandoned Freels’ car, walked to the freeway, found a phone booth and called a taxi. The driver charged them $120 to take them to their homes, in Bellflower and Downey. Freels was arrested at his home about eight hours after the accident.

Hull recommended in his probation report that Freels be given a maximum six-year sentence on one count of vehicular manslaughter and a consecutive sentence of one year and four months on the second count.

“While the defendant makes the credible case for being dazed, hurt and not being able to see well in the dark, he was nonetheless able to think and function well enough to walk 5 miles along I-5, stop at a rest area, call a taxi and make himself understood sufficiently to the taxi driver to be taken to his home in Bellflower,” Hull stated in his report.