Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Man Arrested in Hit-and-Run Death

SANTA CLARITA —  Highway Patrol investigators arrested a 34-year-old man in the hit-and-run death of a Lancaster man Saturday night on the Antelope Valley Freeway.

Tony Leroy Hairston turned himself in at the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Valley station Monday night on the advice of relatives, said Doug Villars, a CHP investigator. Hairston had been due to board a plane to New York from Los Angeles International Airport at 10 p.m., Villars said.

Hairston told CHP investigators that he was planning to admit himself to a drug rehabilitation clinic.

Manuel Robert Freitas, 45, was killed about 10 p.m. Saturday when he stopped on the shoulder of the freeway near Agua Dulce to check a horse trailer that he was hauling north.

Hairston, whose last known address was in Palmdale, had been living in his car for about two weeks after separating from his wife, Villars said.

The Desert Storm veteran apparently began using crack cocaine about six months after he was released from a drug rehabilitation clinic in Minnesota, Villars said. Hairston was arrested on suspicion of felony hit-and-run and vehicular manslaughter.

A rental van allegedly driven by Hairston swerved and struck Freitas while traveling at least 65 m.p.h. and did not stop, CHP officials said.

Hairston drove the van another 21 miles on a flat tire, got out several times to check it and left the vehicle near a rental yard, Villars said.

Police said they identified Hairston from fingerprints found in the truck and from a man who turned over the rental truck to Hairston to return. Several people remember seeing a rental truck with a flat tire after 10 p.m. near the rental yard, Villars said.

Hairston admitted swerving onto the shoulder but told officers that he thought he’d only sideswiped a guardrail, Villars said. Investigators found bloodstains on the front of the rental truck, he said.