New Santa Ana reports that on Tuesday, November 16, 2021, a Lake Forest man was charged with two counts of murder after a deadly DUI crash in Irvine on the 5 Freeway on Sunday.
According to law enforcement officials, at approximately 2:00 a.m., 33-year-old Jorge ErastoCruz was heading southbound in a GMC Yukon when he rear-ended a Honda Civic that had pulled over on the right shoulder of the freeway.
Investigators say one of the occupants of the Civic was attempting to get back into their vehicle when the crash occurred. The force of impact of the GMC hitting the Civic threw the man into the path of oncoming traffic, where an oncoming vehicle struck and killed him.
There were an additional four people inside the Honda Civic at the time of the crash. Emergency crews and paramedics extricated the victims from the vehicle and rushed them to an area hospital for treatment. One of the four, a 25-year-old woman, later died at the hospital as the result of injuries she suffered in the accident.
California Highway Patrol officers responding to the scene of the crash administered a series of field sobriety tests to ErastoCruz, which he failed. ErastoCruz was immediately arrested and taken into custody on suspicion of driving while under the influence of alcohol.
Court documents indicate that ErastoCruz has two prior DUI convictions, one in 2018 and 2019. Because of the prior conviction, a judge has set ErastoCruz’s bail at $1 million.
