Police seek leads in hit-and-run death

Hundreds turned out Thursday to pay their last respects to Max Caputo, the 17-year-old who was killed in a hit-and-run accident early Aug. 19.

Police are still seeking the identity of the driver who struck Caputo on his bicycle at S. Coast Highway and Upland Road.

Officers responded to the site of the accident that Saturday morning at 4:15 a.m. after receiving a report of an injury involving a traffic collision.

Caputo was pronounced dead at the scene by Laguna Beach paramedics. He was not wearing a bicycle helmet, nor did he have a light on his bicycle at the time of the accident, said Laguna Det. Sgt. Darin Lenyi.

“The cause of death was a massive blunt force trauma,” said Jim Amormino, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Dept.

Police believe the vehicle that struck Caputo may be black, because of paint that was transferred to the bicycle, Lenyi said.

“The paint is being analyzed by the lab. Sometimes analyzing the paint can lead to further identification,” Lenyi said.

Anyone with information about the case is asked to contact the Laguna Beach Police Dept. at (949) 497-0701.

Caputo, who would have started his senior year at Laguna Beach High School exactly two weeks after his funeral, was remembered on Thursday by friends and family for his youthful innocence and love of the water.

The funeral was held at St. Catherine of Siena during a full mass that was attended by family, friends, parishioners, policemen and firemen. Attendees crammed into the church sanctuary, perched on stairs outside the church and thronged the stepped terraces around it.

Some stood so far away from the church that they had no hope of hearing the service.

But they stayed anyway.

Photo collages were spread throughout the patio areas, with pictures of Caputo mugging with friends, skimboarding, laughing.

“Laguna will never be the same. He was just the most generous person who ever lived,” said friend Nick Newell.

Many of Caputo’s friends showed solidarity by wearing red and white bandanas on neck, forehead or purse handle. One wore a T-shirt saying “Max Caputo We Miss You.”

Inside the standing-room-only sanctuary, several of Caputo’s friends paid tribute to him in a series of speeches at the microphone, beside a little table upon which sat a photograph of Caputo and a small wooden chest. Overflowing arrangements of tropical flowers surrounded the table.

Friend Numair Faraz called him “a boy’s boy.”

“Max represented the essence of youth better than anyone,” Faraz said. “I mourn as much the loss of a person as I do this ideal of youth and innocence.”