Student Dies in 4th Wrong-Way Freeway Crash in 6 Weeks

PACOIMA — An Italian foreign-exchange student was killed in a wrong-way freeway crash Friday, the day before she was to return to her homeland, in the fourth such accident in the Los Angeles area in six weeks.

Police said the driver of the other auto, 24-year-old Adam Martinez of Sylmar, would be booked for felony manslaughter when he recovers and may face an additional charge of driving under the influence of alcohol if a drink found at the scene is determined to contain liquor.

Martinez and his passenger, Javier Rodriguez of Sylmar, were traveling the wrong way on the transition road between the northbound Golden State Freeway to the westbound Ronald Reagan Freeway about 2 a.m., police said.

Martinez’s car ran head-on into an auto carrying Scjlla Caragliano, 21, of Bologna, Italy, as a passenger. She suffered massive head injuries that killed her instantly, police said.

Kevin Smith, 21, of Northridge, the driver of the car in which Caragliano was a passenger, suffered a broken pelvis and facial cuts, police said.

Martinez suffered a collapsed lung and broken kneecap, and Rodriguez a broken right arm and facial cuts, police said. Rodriguez and Smith were taken to Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills and Martinez was taken to Northridge Hospital Medical Center, where he was under police guard in the intensive-care unit.

Police have not determined how fast the cars were traveling, but Gretchen Jacobs, a California Highway Patrol spokeswoman, said skid marks more than 40 feet long trailed Smith’s car but Martinez apparently never braked.

Caragliano had just completed summer classes at the EF International Language School, a 300-student English-as-a-second-language program for foreign students that rents space on the Cal State Northridge campus.

Grieving friends attended a memorial service at the campus Friday morning and a counselor was on hand to talk to students about the accident.

Ann Metropulos, regional vice president of EF International Language Schools, said Caragliano’s parents were notified Friday morning and that they were making arrangements to ship her body home.

“She was a real treasure to all the people who knew her,” said Metropulos. “It is a real tragedy that this [accident] took her life and that her parents will never see her alive again.”

Caragliano’s compatriots at the school described her as a friendly, outgoing woman who had made a lot of friends in the United States.

This was the third fatal wrong-way freeway accident in the Los Angeles area in two weeks and the fourth since July 20.

Last week the driver of an allegedly stolen car killed two passengers when he drove the wrong way on the San Gabriel Valley Freeway and collided with two other vehicles and a guardrail, police said.

Earlier that week a driver on the Foothill Freeway in Glendale sped 10 miles through oncoming traffic before ramming another car, killing the other driver.

On July 20, two people died when a man drove his van the wrong way on the San Diego Freeway and crashed into a compact car in the southbound lanes near Manchester Avenue, killing both the other car’s occupants, police said.

Despite the spate of wrong-way carnage, Jacobs called the timing coincidental, not the sign of a trend. “It’s very rare that you’re going to find your way onto the wrong way of a freeway,” she said. “Every entrance of the freeway is marked.”

Jacobs also noted that the Botts dots, which stud the pavement to mark freeway lanes, glow red when headlights strike them from the wrong direction.

“If you do happen to be going the wrong way, pull to the shoulder to get your bearings, and get a police officer to help you turn around,” she said.

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Wrong-Way Traffic Fatalities

In the past six weeks there have been four fatal traffic accidents involving drivers going the wrong way.

1. July 20: Two people died after their vehicle collided with another going the wrong way on San Diego (405) Freeway in Inglewood.

2. Aug. 19: One man killed by car going east in westbound lanes for 10 miles on the Foothill Freeway (210).

3. Aug. 22: Two people killed, two more critically injured on San Gabriel Valley Freeway (605).

4. Aug. 29: One woman killed, three people injured on northbound Golden State Freeway (5).

Source: Times reports