A Riverside County Fire Department engine collided with a Mini Cooper in Hemet on Friday, killing the car’s driver and a 10-year-old boy and injuring four others, including three firefighters. The crash shut down the intersection at State Street and Domenigoni Parkway while investigators worked to sort out how the vehicles came together.
The Mini Cooper was being driven west on Gibbel Road by a 43-year-old San Jacinto man when it hit the engine, which was traveling north on State Street with its emergency lights and siren activated. The driver was extricated from the wreckage and died at the scene. The boy in the front passenger seat was taken to Inland Valley Medical Center and later pronounced dead, while another juvenile boy was taken to Riverside University Health System for evaluation.
The engine was responding to a fire burning along Highway 74 at the western edge of the San Bernardino National Forest, and it was also described as answering the Cranston fire. The vehicle was part of a strike team from the Tulare Unit in Visalia, and the three firefighters aboard were taken to Inland Valley Medical Center before being released. Investigators do not believe alcohol or drugs were factors.
The hardest question in the crash remains the one officials have not yet answered: which vehicle had the green light. Details about the signal timing were not immediately available, even as the California Highway Patrol took over the investigation because the engine was a state vehicle. Riverside County has contracted with Cal Fire for fire protection and emergency services since the 1940s, and Friday’s wreck put that relationship under an unwelcome spotlight.
What happens next is a CHP crash probe that will have to reconstruct a violent collision in seconds, using signal data, witness accounts and vehicle positions. Until then, the fatal toll is clear and the sequence is not.
