5 People Die, 2 Injured in 3-Car Collision on Garden Grove Freeway

A three-car collision on the Garden Grove Freeway early Sunday morning killed five people and left one man hospitalized with major injuries, police said.

The accident happened about 2 a.m. in the eastbound lanes of the freeway near Knott Street in Garden Grove, said Officer Bruce Mulligan, spokesman for the California Highway Patrol.

Officers closed the freeway for more than seven hours to investigate the cause of the crash, which is still unknown.

Inquiry Could Take a Week

Mulligan said the crash killed Ramona Bovard, 24, of Garden Grove; Ike Cho, 21, of Anaheim; Danny Joo Kim, 23, of Santa Ana; Eun Kim, 24, of Tustin, and Chung Choi, 28, of Riverside.

The Highway Patrol’s special collision investigation team was at the scene, Mulligan said, but it could take investigators as long as a week to discover the cause of the crash. Officers painted the following scenario:

Bovard was traveling east in the freeway’s center lane just before 2 a.m. when her 1976 Chrysler Cordoba went out of control “for unknown reasons,” Mulligan said. Bovard apparently swerved toward the center divider and then raced back across all three lanes, striking the left rear of a 1974 Chevrolet Cavalier driven by Kwang Kim, 25, of Tustin.

Mulligan said the two cars then drifted apart before one spun around and the two cars collided head-on. Bovard’s car either was stopped or advancing very slowly in the freeway’s middle lane when a driver in 1985 GMC four-wheel-drive “Jimmy” approached and tried to avoid the crash by swerving toward the center divider. The Jimmy, driven by Thomas Koch, 38, of Riverside, hit Bovard’s car and the freeway divider, Mulligan said.

Koch was treated at the accident scene for minor injuries, Mulligan said, but he was not hospitalized. Kwang Kim was taken to Humana Hospital Westminster, where a nursing supervisor said Sunday afternoon that he was in fair condition in the intensive care unit.

Cho, Choi, Joo Kim and Eun Kim were passengers in the Cavalier when the accident happened, Mulligan said, and may have been ejected from the car. He said he thought that several of the passengers were family members, but he was not sure how they were related.

Kwang Kim “was arrested and left at the hospital,” Mulligan said. “He is being investigated for driving under the influence” of alcohol, a misdemeanor.

Although a light rain was falling at the time of the accident, and the freeway lanes were probably slick, Mulligan said, “we’re not sure if the rain had anything to do with it.”

The eastbound side of the Garden Grove Freeway was closed from Beach Boulevard to the San Diego Freeway at 2 a.m. and did not reopen until 9:30 a.m., Mulligan said.