Three 13-year-old girls will be laid to rest Saturday, a week after they were killed in a Halloween night hit-and-run collision.
Funeral services for twin sisters Lexi and Lexandra Perez will be held first Saturday morning at Our Lady Guadalupe in Santa Ana. Services for Andrea Gonzalez will follow at Holy Family Cathedral in Orange, the main church for the Diocese of Orange until Christ Cathedral is dedicated.
Holy Family seats about 800 and the service is expected to draw a large crowd, Diocese of Orange spokesman Ryan Lilyengren said.
The three Santa Ana residents were pronounced dead at the scene of last Friday’s crash. They were in a crosswalk when they were struck in the 1400 block of East Fairhaven Avenue near Jacaranda Street about 6:45 p.m. by a westbound Honda CRV whose driver fled the scene.
Jaquinn Ramone Bell, 31, was arrested late Sunday morning at a Stanton motel and is being held in lieu of $1 million bail pending arraignment Dec. 16 on charges of grossly negligent vehicular manslaughter and hit-and-run. Authorities say his two children were in the CRV with him at the time and that he was driving on a suspended license.
Bell could face up to 17 years in prison if convicted of the charges, with sentence-enhancing allegations of personally inflicting great bodily injury and fleeing the scene of a crime, according to Senior Deputy District Attorney Keith Burke.
Bell additionally faces probation violation allegations, including a case dating back to August 2008 when he pleaded guilty to punching his wife and giving her a black eye and a hit-and-run/drunken driving conviction in August of this year.
—City News Service