Last week 35-year-old Dealio Lockhart caused a massive crash on a California highway when he lost control of the Dodge Challenger he was racing against another idiot in a Dodge Charger. The accident left three dead, and charges against Lockhart have been upgraded from vehicular manslaughter to triple murder which could put him in prison for life.
Lockhart is also being charged with “four counts of reckless driving on a highway causing injury,” as reported by the LA Times. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Inmate Information Center says he’s being held at LA’s Twin Towers Correctional Facility with a bail set at $6.2 million.
His next court date is scheduled for April 6th, 2016. With bail set that high I can’t imagine he’ll be leaving the custody of the county before his appearance.
Reports say he was driving on the I-5 highway through Commerce, California which is just south of Los Angeles when he came up on a Dodge Charger and one of the two cars instigated a race.
Lockhart’s Challenger lost control and “slammed into a UPS truck, causing the big rig to flip over the median, smash into oncoming traffic and explode. The big rig collided with a gray Nissan, sheared its top off and came to rest atop of a red Ford Explorer,” the LA Times said from the scene.
Not to be confused with a little brown van, that UPS truck was a semi-truck with a lot of mass in motion. From CDL Life’s report:
“The truck driver, Scott Treadway, was killed in the crash along with two teens who were in the Nissan: Michelle Littlefield and Brian Lewandowski. Two other people were in the Nissan when the crash happened; [College student Tony Miramontes] is in a coma while the other remains in critical condition. Two others were also hurt in the crash.”
Lewandowski’s father is a homicide lieutenant in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
Sadly, street racing in Los Angeles is reportedly still on the rise. I might have thought it fell out of fashion with giant aluminum wings on Civics and under-car neon lighting, but apparently people are gathering in greater numbers than ever to criminally race each other on public roads.
“They jump on any one of their social media sites, only to move the problem to one of our partnering jurisdictions,” Los Angeles police Captain John McMahon said in an LA times story about street racing last year.
Meanwhile the Dodge Charger that Lockhart was “racing” against is still at large. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors (political leadership in LA) is offering $10,000 for information leading to that unknown driver’s arrest.
Please be safe out there, friends.
Image via CBS Los Angeles screengrab, LASD screengrab
Contact the author at andrew@jalopnik.com.