An 18-year-old motorist who was killed in a rollover crash on Highway 74 west of Hemet apparently lost control of his car while speeding on the rain-slick roadway, the California Highway Patrol said Tuesday.
Hector Gonzalez of Winchester was fatally injured shortly after 6 a.m. Sunday on the westbound 74, just west of Four Seasons Boulevard, in a community known as Green Acres, according to the CHP.
Officer Kyle Darst said Gonzalez was at the wheel of a 2004 Lexus, traveling at a “high rate of speed” during rain showers when he “lost control … as he negotiated a curve in the roadway.”
The sedan overturned and struck the raised curb on the north edge of the highway, then rolled off the corridor, where the “passenger side of the Lexus crashed into a tree,” the CHP spokesman said.
“The force of the impact caused the vehicle to split in half,” he said.
Darst said the victim was not wearing a seatbelt and suffered grave injuries.
The young man was airlifted to Inland Valley Medical Center in Wildomar, where he died an hour later.
An autopsy was pending Tuesday. It remained unknown whether alcohol or drugs factored into the crash.