A husband and wife have been ordered to stand trial in the hit-and-run crash that killed Adrianna Bachan, a 18-year-old USC freshman from Montecito, and badly injured a companion.
Claudia Cabrera, 30, of Los Angeles, is accused of driving the car that allegedly ran a red light and struck Bachan and a fellow student, Marcus Garfinkle, 19, of Scottsdale, Ariz., about 3 a.m. March 29. The students were hit in a marked crosswalk on Jefferson Boulevard at Hoover Street, on the north side of the USC campus. Bachan died of her injuries.
Witnesses reported that the car drove about 400 feet with Garfinkle embedded in the hood and windshield before the driver stopped and a passenger — later identified as Cabrera’s husband, Josue Luna, 33 — got out and threw him to the ground. Garfinkle’s legs were broken and he suffered numerous other injuries.
An intense police search and a $235,000 reward resulted in several tips that led to the pair, who were arrested in April. Los Angeles police said Cabrera was driving with a suspended license for unpaid traffic tickets at the time of the collision and that the couple’s 7-month-old infant also was in the car.
Cabrera and Luna were ordered to face charges including vehicular manslaughter and hit-and-run causing great bodily harm. An earlier attempt to reach a plea agreement reportedly fell through.
Bachan, the daughter of Carmen and James Bachan of Montecito, was a 2008 graduate of Santa Barbara High, where she captained the girls’ soccer team as a senior. She played on the 2007-08 Santa Barbara Soccer Club Girls Under 19 Premier team, and she and her mother were longtime snow-cone booth volunteers at the Children’s Creative Project’s I Madonnari festival at the Santa Barbara Mission. Bachan was an environmental studies major at USC and a new member of Pi Beta Phi sorority.
— Noozhawk publisher Bill Macfadyen can be reached at wmacfadyen@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk.
