The coroner’s office Sunday confirmed the identity of a man killed when his parked car was struck on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu by a pickup truck operated by a man suspected of driving under influence of alcohol or drugs.
He was 46-year-old Dewayne Lawrence Coleman, Lt. Larry Dietz of the Los Angeles County coroner’s office said.
Coleman’s sister Irene Coleman said her brother was best known as rapper MC Supreme.
A woman who was a passenger in Coleman’s car was injured in the crash and the suspected DUI driver was arrested, authorities said.
The crash happened about 6:20 a.m. Saturday, south of Corral Canyon Road, Sgt. Matthew Dunn of the Los Angeles County Sheriff‘s Malibu-Lost Hills Station said.
The driver of the GMC Sierra pickup truck that struck Coleman’s Honda Civic was identified as 33-year-old Philip Thomas Torres II of Oxnard, Dunn said.
The crash crumpled the Honda and caused it to roll over and come to a rest at the lip of an embankment above the beach. The pickup truck then flipped and barreled into a second parked vehicle, also a pickup.
The man and woman in that second vehicle were not hurt, they told a City News Service reporter.
It was unclear how badly injured the woman in the Honda was. At least one person had to be extricated from a vehicle, a Los Angeles County Fire Department dispatcher said.
The errant pickup drifted into the parked cars, deputies at the scene said.
The crash scene was about 300 feet east of the traffic signal at Corral Canyon Road and Pacific Coast Highway — at an area where people park their vehicles and head for the beach at nearly all hours. It closed eastbound PCH at Corral Canyon Road, with traffic headed east from the Point Dume area diverted to a 35-mile detour on foggy mountain roads.
The road was reopened to two-way traffic at 9:45 a.m., and all lanes were reopened by noon.
Irene Coleman said her brother’s rap song “Black In America” was played by Mike Tyson when he made his way to the ring prior to a fight in the 1990s.
She also said Coleman appeared that decade with a group of rappers, including KRS-One, on the Arsenio Hall show, performing the song “All in the Same Gang.”
“He was a positive person, dedicated to working with young people” in an effort to keep them from getting caught up in the gang culture, Irene Coleman told City News Service.
“We are devastated,” she said of her family.
She pointed out that her brother was legally parked when the crash occurred.
— City News Service