Wrong-Way Freeway Crash in Pacoima Kills Student From Italy

The day before she was to return to her homeland, an Italian foreign exchange student was killed Friday in a wrong-way freeway crash in Pacoima. It was the fourth such accident in the Los Angeles area in six weeks.

Scjlla Caragliano, 21, of Bologna suffered massive head injuries that killed her instantly, police said. The car in which she was a passenger was struck head-on by an auto traveling the wrong way on the transition road from the northbound Golden State Freeway to the westbound Simi Valley Freeway about 2 a.m., police said.

Police said the driver of the wrong-way auto, 24-year-old Adam Martinez of Sylmar, would be booked for felony manslaughter when he recovers from his injuries. He may face an additional charge of driving under the influence of alcohol if a drink found at the scene is determined to contain liquor.

Martinez suffered a collapsed lung and broken kneecap, and his passenger, Javier Rodriguez of Sylmar, sustained a broken right arm and facial cuts, police said. Kevin Smith, 21, of Northridge, the driver of the car in which Caragliano was a passenger, suffered a broken pelvis and facial cuts.

Rodriguez and Smith were taken to Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills, and Martinez was taken to Northridge Hospital Medical Center, where he was under police guard in the intensive care unit.

Caragliano had just completed summer classes at the EF International Language School, a 300-student English as a second language program for foreign students that rents space on the Cal State Northridge campus.

Grieving friends attended a memorial service at the campus’ satellite student union Friday morning, and a counselor was on hand to talk to students about the accident. Caragliano’s compatriots at the school described her as an outgoing woman who had made a lot of friends in this country.

Ann Metropulos, regional vice president of EF International Language Schools, said Caragliano’s parents were notified Friday morning and that they were making arrangements to ship the body home.

“She was a real treasure to all the people who knew her,” Metropulos said. “It is a real tragedy that this [accident] took her life and that her parents will never see her alive again.”

Police have not determined how fast the cars were traveling. However, Gretchen Jacobs, a California Highway Patrol spokeswoman, said skid marks more than 40 feet long trailed Smith’s car and that Martinez apparently never braked.

This was the third fatal wrong-way freeway accident in the Los Angeles area in two weeks, and the fourth since July 20.

Last week, two people were killed when a stolen car traveling the wrong way on the San Gabriel River Freeway struck two other vehicles and a guardrail, police said. That same week, a driver on the Foothill Freeway sped 10 miles through oncoming traffic before ramming another car, killing the other driver.

On July 20, a man drove his van the wrong way on the San Diego Freeway and crashed into a compact car in the southbound lanes near Manchester Avenue, killing both the other car’s occupants, police said.

Despite the spate of wrong-way accidents, Jacobs called the timing coincidental, not the sign of a trend. “It’s very rare that you’re going to find your way onto the wrong way of a freeway,” she said. “Every entrance of the freeway is marked.”

Jacobs also said that the Botts dots that stud the pavement to mark off freeway lanes glow red when headlights strike them from the wrong direction.

“If you do happen to be going the wrong way, pull to the shoulder to get your bearings and get a police officer to help you turn around,” she said.