Car collides into Taco Surf on PCH, months after renovations from similar crash completed

Lightning doesn’t strike twice, but apparently late-night drivers do.

Such is the case for Taco Surf, a restaurant fronting Pacific Coast Highway in Surfside, which became the target of a high-speed collision early Sunday that resulted in the arrest of one driver on suspicion of DUI and the hospitalization of two passengers.

The event marks the second time in less than a year Taco Surf has served as a hapless ground zero for unsafe driving. A hit-and-run collision last March caused significant damage to the structure that forced owners to close a portion of the restaurant for renovations, according to manager Olga Zimmerman, who also tends bar.

“It really messed up the place — it kind of shifted the entire building,” Zimmerman said Tuesday. “That side of the restaurant was shut down for seven or eight months.”

A hit-and-run driver collided into the Taco Surf on PCH on March 10 causing significant structural damage that took months to complete, a manager said Tuesday.

(Courtesy of Seal Beach Police Department)

Sunday’s incident took place shortly after 1 a.m., when the driver of a 2005 Subaru Impreza traveling northbound on PCH lost control and crashed into a palm tree before rolling into the building, Seal Beach Police spokesman Lt. Nick Nicholas said Tuesday.

While the impact from the solo-vehicle crash caused only minor damage to Taco Surf, two male passengers in the vehicle sustained injuries and were taken to a nearby hospital.

Nicholas confirmed one of the men was treated for non-life-threatening injuries and released. The other sustained major head trauma and was still listed in critical condition days after the crash.

The driver, Ted Lorenzo Ramirez, 22, of Norwalk, was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence, causing injury. An online prison inmate locator maintained by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department indicated Ramirez posted bond and was released by 11:30 p.m. Sunday.

Nicholas said police notified the owner of Taco Surf about the collision and convened a Serious Traffic Accident Reconstruction (STAR) team — a special interagency group of traffic investigators from Seal Beach, Los Alamitos, Cypress, Westminster and La Palma — to investigate.

Orange spray paint applied by traffic investigators marks the path of a vehicle that collided into the front of Taco Surf in Surfside on Sunday morning, just after 1 a.m.

(Kevin Chang / Staff Photographer)

“It takes us quite a while to locate and collect evidence. We map out the entire scene and use drones to take aerial photos,” Nicholas added. “Because this happened in the middle of the night, we waited until there was at least some daylight, to make sure we aren’t missing any evidence.”

While STAR team members consider factors that may have contributed to Sunday’s collision, Zimmerman says she can think of a couple. For example, PCH curves just south of the restaurant, which may create a blind spot, while an intersection of the highway with Anderson Street near Taco Surf complicates the situation further.

“There’s a light right there, about 50 feet from us,” Zimmerman said. “I think that’s where people seem to be having problems.”

Sheet metal patches a hole caused by a vehicle that collided into the front of Taco Surf in Surfside on Sunday.

(Kevin Chang / Staff Photographer)

Last year’s collision occurred at 1:45 a.m. on March 10, when a pickup truck being driven on PCH hydroplaned toward Taco Surf and crashed into the building before fleeing the scene, according to video surveillance footage shared by Seal Beach police. The driver was never identified, and the case is still under investigation, Nicholas said.

Zimmerman, who saw footage from both incidents, said she believes Ramirez had been speeding or possibly racing his Subaru in the moments leading up to Sunday’s accident.

“The cops are estimating those kids were going up to 110 mph — we can just see them slam right into the building,” she said, indicating the point of impact is almost the same location as the March collision.

The exterior of Taco Surf, after a hit-and-run driver collided into the structure in March 2021.

(Courtesy of Seal Beach Police Department)

A Seal Beach Public Works official could not confirm Wednesday whether that stretch of PCH, less than 1 mile north of Huntington Beach, is known for collisions, indicating the highway is in the jurisdiction of the California Department of Transportation.

Caltrans’ District 12 spokesman Nathan Abler said the department was not immediately aware of an extraordinary number of incidents occurring at the location. But Zimmerman, who’s worked at Taco Surf for six years, knows there’s no guarantee a similar situation won’t happen again.

“There’s a curve,” she said. “And people are drunk.”

Anyone with information on Sunday’s collision is encouraged to contact SBPD traffic investigator Officer Hector Mercado at (562) 799-4100, ext. 1634 or hmercado@sealbeachca.gov.

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