One Tuesday night in August, Angel Flores dropped off his fiancée, Leslie Salazar, on Carrillo Street 20 minutes before he sped 94 miles an hour down Cliff Drive, slamming his 1997 Lexus sedan into a curb, fire hydrant, and tree trunk.
Flores and two friends in the backseat — Daniella Hearn, 19, and her boyfriend Ben Rubio, 28 — died at the scene. Michael Mendoza, who is 29, barely survived. (Mendoza and Flores were wearing seatbelts; Hearn and Rubio were not.)
Mendoza did not know the others in the car very well. “I am always walking around town,” he said. He would run into Hearn downtown; he had met Flores once before. He cannot remember why he was driving around with them that night. “I don’t remember the stay at the hospital,” he added. “I don’t remember people coming to see me. It does suck, but if I did remember everything, I don’t know how I’d really feel right now.”