A Malibu resident rescued the surviving victim of a horrendous accident on Pacific Coast Highway that ended in flames, with car parts strewn across four lanes of traffic, killing the passenger and leaving the driver in serious condition.
At about 3:20 a.m. on Aug. 22, Santa Monica resident Tarek Ahmed Tolba, 29, was allegedly speeding eastbound on PCH at 90 to 100 mph, as reported by a witness to sheriff’s officials, when he lost control of his open Mercedes convertible at Rambla Vista, which went airborne and crashed into a concrete mailbox pole.
He then collided into another pole, which struck the driver’s side. When his car finally stopped it caught on fire. The passenger, Andrea Schackne, 24, from San Diego, was thrown from the vehicle, according to sheriff’s officials, to the ocean-side shoulder by the force of the collision and died on impact. Tolba was pulled out of the burning car by Malibu resident Ken Crane and was airlifted to UCLA Medical Center.
“He was busted up really bad,” said Sgt. Kevin Mauch of the Lost Hills/Malibu Sheriff’s Station. “He broke his spine in several places.”
Crane, a flight attendant, was returning to his home in West Malibu from LAX when he saw the wreckage. He said the mangled debris, which “didn’t even appear as a car,” was everywhere. “It looked like a satellite fell out of the sky onto PCH. It was dark and eerie–no one else was around.”
The passenger door was ripped off and Crane “saw a body slumped over the console. “He was moaning. I was apprehensive about pulling the individual out because of possible neck and back injuries.” But when flames from the front of the wreckage began to shoot out toward the windshield on the driver’s side, he realized Tolba probably had no chance of survival if left in the car so he pulled him to safety.
Another motorist stopped to help and called 911 while Crane jogged to the fire station at Carbon Canyon. When Crane returned, the motorist told him another body was lying on the shoulder of the highway, motionless. And because of the growing flames, he’d had to drag Tolba farther away from the car.
A witness who was driving on PCH told sheriff’s deputies that Tolba passed her at about twice the speed she was traveling.
There was so much debris on the highway–the Mercedes’ engine was more than 100 feet from the crash site up Rambla Vista–that by 9 a.m., southbound traffic on PCH from Cross Creek Road to Las Flores Canyon Road was still being diverted onto a northbound lane. The accident also caused a backup on the Ventura Freeway.
Tolba was intoxicated at the time of the accident, according to sheriff’s officials. Mauch said that Tolba could be charged with manslaughter or second-degree murder and a felony DUI.