April crash that claimed the life of 53-year-old Heather Lewis of Long Beach<\/a>.<\/p>\nOfficials allege that McHargue was driving a white BMW 328i the night of April 15, when he rear-ended Lewis\u2019 silver Kia Soul on Pacific Coast Highway, south of Warner Avenue. The impact sent Lewis\u2019 vehicle off the roadway and into the Bolsa Chica Wetlands, where it overturned and became submerged, trapping her inside. <\/p>\n
Lewis was extracted from the vehicle but died of her injuries at the hospital. Investigators determined McHargue had been driving more than 100 mph shortly before the crash, Cuchilla said, more than twice the posted speed limit. They also found his blood-alcohol level was at more than double the legal limit and that he had also consumed marijuana, according to Cuchilla.<\/p>\n
The investigation further determined McHargue had been repeatedly warned that impaired driving could kill someone and had acknowledged that risk. Under those circumstances, a fatal DUI can be charged as second-degree murder in California.<\/p>\n
\u201cDriving in excess of 100 miles per hour, at more than double the posted speed limit and with an alcohol level more than double the legal limit is not an accident,\u201d Huntington Beach Police Chief Eric Parra said in a statement. \u201cThis was a series of reckless choices that ended an innocent woman\u2019s life.\u201d<\/p>\n
The investigation into the crash remains ongoing. Anyone who may have witnessed the collision, or events leading up to it, is encouraged to contact HBPD Traffic Investigator Vishal Rattanchandani at (714) 536-5231.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Huntington Beach police have arrested a 24-year-old Long Beach man on suspicion of murder, stemming from a fatal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400335,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[160740,20675,350,160743,160739,160741,348,1637,131,133,132,160738,1331,1869,31338,178,160742,1557],"class_list":["post-400609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-24-year-old-long-beach-man","tag-april","tag-crash","tag-cuchilla","tag-heather-lewis","tag-huntington-beach-police","tag-investigation","tag-life","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-lukas-mchargue","tag-murder","tag-night","tag-speed-limit","tag-vehicle","tag-wetland-crash","tag-woman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}