Suspect in Temescal Valley deadly car-ramming crash faces spouse abuse, child injury charges
A Temescal Valley man under investigation in the car-ramming deaths of three 16-year-old boys and injuries to three others already faces misdemeanor charges of spousal abuse and willful injury to a child, court records show.
The Riverside County District Attorney’s Office, which filed the misdemeanor abuse charges in December against Anurag Chandra, 42, was on Tuesday, Jan. 21, awaiting the California Highway Patrol’s investigation report on the Sunday night crash.
Once prosecutors get the case, “we will review the evidence and make a filing decision,” District Attorney spokesman John Hall said.
Based on the early Monday arrest of Chandra and the Monday holiday, if charges are filed Chandra will likely be in court to enter a plea on Thursday, Hall said.
Chandra was arrested on suspicion of murder and assault with a deadly weapon. He remained in custody without bail Tuesday at the Robert Presley Detention Center in Riverside.
Daniel Hawkins, 16, of Corona; Drake Ruiz, 16, of Corona; and Jacob Ivascu, 16, of Riverside, died late Sunday night when the CHP said Chandra intentionally rammed the Toyota Prius the three boys were in, along with three other friends who survived.
The CHP would not comment why its investigators believe the boys were chased and rammed by Chandra in his white Infiniti. The force of the collision sent the Prius into a tree at Temescal Canyon Road and Trilogy Parkway.
Witnesses told CHP officers about the Infiniti they saw ram the Prius and flee, with front-end damage, and where it was parked. Chandra was arrested less than a mile from the crash scene.
Officer Juan Quintero, a CHP spokesman, said Tuesday he could not comment on the condition of the three surviving boys because of patient privacy laws.
He did not immediately respond to a question about how the CHP investigation was going.
Ruiz’s mother told reporters the teens, who were on their way to a sleepover to celebrate Ivascu’s birthday, tried to play a “ding-dong-ditch” prank — ringing a doorbell and quickly driving away — at a friend’s home, but Chandra answered the door, got into his Infiniti and chased the teens.
“The boys were playing ding-dong-ditch at a house they thought was … somebody their age, but it turned out to be that angry man,” Debbie Ruiz said.
She said when the suspect began chasing them, “they fled for their lives basically.”
“They were scared to death, tried to get away several times,” she said. “He rammed them, ran them off the road.”
KTLA reported that Ruiz said she wanted to thank a woman who stayed with the boys at the crash scene and prayed with them, as well as a good Samaritan who followed the suspect and reported his location to police.
The case filed against Chandra in December in Riverside County Superior Court charged him with misdemeanor battery on a spouse or cohabitant, and willful injury to a child.
The Dec. 31 complaint says the woman he was charged with committing battery upon is the parent of his child, and that he inflicted “unjustifiable physical pain” on the child, which the document identified only as a female who was in his care and custody.
The charges sprang from a Sept. 9 incident, the complaint against Chandra says. He is scheduled to enter a plea on Jan. 31 in that case, court records show.
Chandra was arrested early Monday on Mojeska Summit Road, and the same street is named in the December complaint against him. His birth date on the December complaint also matches his jail booking information .
While authorities give Chandra’s hometown as Corona, the address where he was arrested is actually south of that city, in the Temescal Valley area of Riverside County.
City News Service contributed to this story.