Murder trial begins for repeat DUI offender and wrong-way driver in freeway ramp crash in Tustin
A repeat DUI offender sped the wrong way along a freeway for more than five miles before crashing into an oncoming vehicle in Tustin, killing another driver, a prosecutor told jurors on Wednesday in Orange County Superior Court.
Ivan Gonzalez, 31, faces a second-degree murder charge for the death of 33-year-old Michael Johnston Jr., as well as two additional felony driving-under-the-influence charges for seriously injuring a woman who was a passenger in Johnston’s vehicle.
Shortly before 2 a.m. on Jan. 5, 2018, a California Highway Patrol officer watching 5 Freeway traffic from the Gene Autry Way overpass in Anaheim spotted a Toyota Camry speeding southbound in the northbound lanes, Deputy District Attorney Brian Orue told a Santa Ana jury.
The officer chased after the wrong-way driver at nearly 100 miles per hour, the prosecutor said, but was unable to catch up. He requested assistance from other CHP officers, as well as a helicopter.
Two other CHP officers spotted the Camry heading the wrong way up onto a flyover ramp connecting the carpool lanes of the north 55 Freeway to the north 5. Before the officers could reach the Camry, it collided with a Ford Mustang.
The collision forced the Mustang up onto the concrete barrier on the side of the ramp, the prosecutor told jurors, and both vehicles traveled another 200 feet before coming to a stop. Johnston, a Brea resident, was killed while his passenger, a 24-year-old Burbank woman, was seriously injured.
Orue said Gonzalez was not wearing a seat belt, and that a blood test taken approximately three hours after the collision found that the defendant had a blood alcohol level of .21 percent, nearly three times the legal limit.
Gonzalez had twice before been convicted of driving under the influence, in 2016 and in 2017.
In both cases, he had been formally warned by the court that if he continued to drink and drive, and if he caused a collision in which somebody was killed, he could be charged with murder, Orue said. He was also enrolled in a court-ordered alcohol class, the prosecutor added, and had met with a counselor about a day prior.
“It’s not an accident, and there are no excuses,” Orue said.
Gonzalez’s attorney, J.R. Thomas, told jurors that his client had “made mistakes, no doubt about it,” but described the evidence against him as circumstantial.
Thomas said Gonzalez at the time of the crash did not have the “state of mind” necessary to convict him of second-degree murder.
The defense attorney said Gonzalez accidentally entered the freeway in an exit lane.
It wasn’t clear exactly where Gonzalez got onto the freeway, or how long he was driving before the CHP officer spotted him.