CHP: No one told officers Cloverdale girl was missing

Officers who responded to a Friday night crash involving suspected teenage street racers outside Cloverdale thought they were investigating a minor collision that resulted in wrecked cars but only slight injuries to one passenger, according to the CHP.

The scene of the crash, though complicated by darkness and the crowd of teenagers who had to be picked up by parents, appeared to be somewhat routine at the time, according to CHP spokesman Jon Sloat, who provided new details about the fatal collision that killed Angelica Contreras, a 16-year-old who had just completed her sophomore year at Cloverdale High School.

In the aftermath Friday, at the East First Street bridge over the Russian River where one of the cars had slammed into a concrete barrier about 10:20 p.m., no one told law enforcement personnel or firefighters about a spectator who had disappeared, Sloat said.

There were a total of nine teenagers present during the street race, including two drivers, two passengers and two people serving as lookouts for other cars, Sloat said. The remaining trio was made up by Contreras and two friends, who Sloat said were standing near or sitting on the concrete barrier in a dirt pullout on the eastern side of the bridge in the moments before a Volkswagen Beetle lost control and hit the retaining wall.

Two of the teens in that spot escaped injury. But no one apparently saw what happened to Contreras, and investigators are now focusing on why they were not told of her disappearance Friday night. Cloverdale firefighters and police officers were the first to arrive, followed by CHP officers.

“The main question we have is did they intentionally not tell us this girl was gone because they didn’t want her to get in trouble … or had everyone assumed she had gotten into a car?” Sloat said. Friday night, the drivers left with their parents, who arranged to have the vehicles towed.

Contreras’s body was discovered the next morning by a passing cyclist about 150 feet from the site of the crash on a patch of ground below the bridge and near the Russian River. Investigators believe she had been struck by the Volkswagen, which they estimated was traveling at a speed greater than 50 mph before the 16-year-old Cloverdale male driver lost control, the CHP said. The car was racing against a 2008 BMW 535i sedan driven by a 17-year-old Cloverdale male, the CHP said.

The fatal collision could bring a maximum charge of felony vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence to the drivers because investigators have “ample evidence” the incident involved illegal street racing, Sloat said. No one has been arrested, and the investigation report will be given to the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office.

The discovery of Contreras’ body Saturday set off a two-day push by investigators to re-examine the accident scene and interview the other eight teens involved, some of them for the second time. The inquiry continued Monday, when a special team trained in accident reconstruction returned to the site. An autopsy also took place but preliminary results weren’t available.

The county Coroner’s Office did not release Contreras’ name Monday as sheriff’s officials said they were still waiting for confirmation from the CHP that family members had been alerted, a step that CHP officials said they took Saturday.

On Sunday, inside their Cloverdale home, Contreras’ family spoke of their shattering loss, which cut short Angelica’s dream of going to college and one day becoming a forensic investigator. Angelica, the third of five siblings, was a fun-loving and friendly girl who for several years had taken charge of preparing the family’s Thanksgiving Day meal, relatives said.

“I don’t know how I’m going to live or anything,” her mother, Silvia Contreras, said.

The accident occurred a day after graduation at Cloverdale High School and followed the Friday Night Live summer concert that Angelica told her mother she planned to attend with friends.

At some point in the night, Contreras and four other girls rode with the driver of the Beetle out of town to the East First Street bridge, according to a girl who told The Press Democrat on Saturday that she had been standing with Contreras at the time of the crash.

Three of the girls, including Contreras, got out of the car and stood near a concrete barrier at the bridge’s eastern end to watch the race unfold, the girl said. She declined to provide her name and authorities could not immediately confirm some of the details she shared over the weekend.

She said the Beetle and the BMW sped off eastbound on the road where the speed limit is 50 mph. On the way back to the bridge, the Beetle entered the oncoming lane and sped up just as the BMW was turning left.

The CHP said Contreras was struck when the Beetle hit the concrete retaining wall where she and the other girls had been either standing or sitting. The Beetle also hit the BMW and the 17-year-old driver veered off the roadway into the dirt.

The girl near Contreras said one of her friends - not Angelica - pushed her out of the way when she realized a crash was about to happen. But she said nobody saw Contreras get hit.

“When we turned around, she wasn’t there anymore,” the girl said on Saturday.

She said they’d called for Contreras and used their cellphones for light as they looked in the area of the bridge where the girls had been watching the race.

They found no sign of her and decided she’d headed home, possibly trying to avoid trouble, the girl said.

As firefighters and law enforcement responded to calls to 911, the crowd at the scene quickly grew to include other teenagers and parents who were called and sent text messages about the collision. About a dozen parents drove to the site of the crash, Sloat said. “It was a chaotic scene,” he said.

Cloverdale Fire Chief Jason Jenkins said that one girl, a passenger, was treated for minor injuries and was released to her mother’s care, he said.

“There was nothing to lead anybody to believe that there could have been other people unaccounted for,” Jenkins said. “We assessed the patients, helped with traffic control, all the emergency responders worked together in doing that.”

Cloverdale police helped manage traffic at the scene but were not otherwise involved in the initial investigation.

Susan Jones, Cloverdale’s interim police chief, said that she was told by a sergeant that the officers and paramedics “were asking all of the teenagers at the scene if all of their friends were accounted for and the answer they both got was yes.”