Doctor’s Staff Mourns Victims of Crash

Workers at the High Desert Hemodialysis Center in Palmdale grieved Friday for three co-workers who died when a parolee reportedly speeding in a Jeep Cherokee loaded with beer cans and drug paraphernalia slammed head-on into their car.

“If it had been 10 seconds earlier or 10 seconds later, it wouldn’t have happened,” said Paul Hamblin, director of social services at the center.

The staff, he said, had learned of the accident from a patient who happened to drive by the crash scene Thursday afternoon and recognized the injured.

Three passengers in Dr. John Fisher’s car were killed and a fourth was injured. Fisher and the Jeep driver survived.

Also killed was Therese Frisch, 38, of Lancaster, a passenger in the Jeep. Witnesses told police the vehicle was traveling northward on Sierra Highway at 90 to 100 mph when it rear-ended a pickup truck, crossed the lane divider and slammed into Fisher’s car.

Officials arrested the alleged driver of the Jeep, Shawn Eugene Beavers, 27, of Rosamond, on suspicion of violating parole for burglary. Beavers is expected to be charged with four counts of vehicular manslaughter and possibly drunk and reckless driving, said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Jeff Perkins.

The coroner’s office is completing toxicology reports on whether Beavers and Frisch were intoxicated, Perkins said. Police found open and unopened beer cans and narcotics paraphernalia in the Jeep but no drugs, he said.

The Jeep had been reported stolen Sunday in Sherman Oaks.

Beavers suffered broken legs and is in the sheriff’s jail ward at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center.

Workers at the dialysis center, many of whom stayed home Friday in mourning, described their late colleagues as caring and dedicated. They had spent months, employees said, planning for a new dialysis center scheduled to open later this year.

One of them was Georgina Schmidt, 43, of Lancaster, who raised her 11-year-old son, Dylan, while working at the dialysis center.

“She wanted to watch her son grow up, and this guy took it away from her,” said her ex-husband, Brad Schmidt, with whom she had remained friends. “I won’t be able to replace her. The main thing in her life was her son, that he be happy and grow up right. It’s a tragedy that this happened and somebody should answer to this.”

Also killed were Mary Rittenberg, 41, and her husband Mark, 52, of Palmdale, who worked together at the center and doted on their children and grandchildren, colleagues said.

“They were very much in love,” Hamblin said. “They were like newlyweds all the time. They were well loved by patients and peers.”

Fisher, who suffered minor injuries, is director of the dialysis center and a kidney specialist at Antelope Valley Hospital.

His fourth passenger, 37-year-old Linda Mann, was in critical but stable condition Friday at Lancaster Community Hospital.

The driver of the pickup truck first struck by the Jeep, Michael O’Donnell, 40, of Palmdale, escaped serious injury, police said.