CHP: Sonoma State University student dies in multi-car Lakeville Highway crash involving DUI driver

Sonoma State University student Paulette Quiba went to a restaurant in Concord on Sunday night for a family celebration to mark the 10th anniversary of their arrival in the United States.

The 21-year-old business student died about 45 minutes after she said goodbye and headed for Rohnert Park, killed when a suspected drunken driver crossed into her lane on Lakeville Highway and smashed head-on into her sedan.

CHP officers arrested Logologoa “Logo” Tevaseu, 35, who once played football for Santa Rosa Junior College and works as an assistant coach for the Bear Cubs football team.

The Santa Rosa man was convicted of drunken driving in 2012 in Sonoma County, the CHP said. Because of that prior conviction, CHP officers early Monday booked him into the Sonoma County Jail on suspicion of murder - a more serious charge than manslaughter - plus two drunken driving charges.

Paulette Quiba was a member of Phi Sigma Sigma at Sonoma State and active in her Oakley church, St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, said her father, Pablo Quiba of Oakley.

Though she left Contra Costa County in 2015 to enroll at Sonoma State, he said she remained close with her parents and two siblings.

“She is very beautiful, a very nice daughter,” Pablo Quiba said.

She was a junior at Sonoma State, where she took pre-business courses and was a member of the Accounting Forum, the Filipino American Association and Join Us Making Progress, the community service program of the Associated Students, university President Judy Sakaki said.

“She will be missed by her friends and classmates as well as by the faculty and staff who were lucky enough to know her,” Sakaki said in an email sent Monday night to students and staff.

Last summer, she worked as an intern with PwC Audit Services in San Francisco and her bosses were so pleased with her performance they’d offered her a job, Pablo Quiba said.

“She had a very bright future,” her uncle, Julius Quiba, said during a phone interview.

Pablo Quiba and his wife, Perlita, left Manila and moved to America a decade ago to ensure their three children received a good education.

“They are the ones who give us inspiration,” he said in a 2012 video interview showcasing Oakley residents who had chosen to settle in the East Bay town.

Their eldest daughter, Phoebe, graduated last year from Dominican University with a nursing degree and is working full-time in the Bay Area. Younger brother Powell attends Freedom High School in Oakley.

In the video, Pablo Quiba, who said he works as a security guard in San Francisco, said living in Oakley has been “really perfect” for his family.

This weekend, Paulette Quiba wanted to get together with family, and her father suggested she join them to celebrate the anniversary of their arrival in America from the Philippines.

The family spent about two hours at a Colombian barbecue restaurant in Concord before she left at about 8:30 p.m. to return to her apartment, her father said.

The 9:10 p.m. collision happened on the rural highway near Cougar Mountain Drive, just north of Highway 37.

Tevaseu was in a 2006 Dodge Ram pickup headed south on Lakeville Highway and was passing vehicles illegally across double yellow lines, CHP Officer Jon Sloat said.

While passing other southbound cars, he struck Quiba’s 2015 Toyota Corolla, which was traveling north.

Three vehicles then collided with the Toyota or each other. Three people were taken to Memorial and Petaluma Valley hospitals with minor and moderate injuries.

CHP officers arrived first and began offering medical aid, joined by Lakeville, Petaluma, Cal Fire and Schell-Vista firefighters, and multiple ambulances, Sloat said.

Tevaseu refused to take a blood test, which was conducted after officers obtained a search warrant, Sloat said.

Tevaseu works as a defensive line coach at SRJC with his younger brother, Martin Tevaseu, who declined to comment Monday about his brother’s arrest.

Logo Tevaseu grew up in a gang-infested Bay Area neighborhood and was on a path to a California Youth Authority prison until he was placed in the Lifeworks Academy group home in Boonville, according to a 2004 article in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.

He enrolled at Anderson Valley High School, where he was voted student body president and became an honor roll student and a standout athlete.

He played football two seasons at SRJC, where he was an all-conference linebacker and punter, then moved to Texas Christian University in 2003.

Years later Tevaseu returned to SRJC to help coach the team. On Monday afternoon, Santa Rosa Junior College football coach Lenny Wagner struggled with news of the fatal crash and the arrest.

“This is a kid I’m really close to,” Wagner said. “He’s like family. This is super hard right now.”

He declined to comment further.

CHP officers, paramedics and firefighters found a road cluttered with the wreckage of five vehicles when they arrived at the Lakeville Highway crash site Sunday night.

The Toyota, with Quiba still inside, was sandwiched between two other vehicles with a third crumpled vehicle nearby, all on the roadway.

Still visible in the back of the Toyota was a Sonoma State University license plate frame.

Tevaseu’s pickup had stopped some 150 feet from the Toyota, off the roadway, officials said. His truck and Quiba’s Toyota both suffered massive front-end damage upon impact.

The CHP closed Lakeville Highway at Highway 37 and at Old Lakeville Road No. 3 to investigate the crash.

Four hours after the initial crash, a driver failed to slow down at the barricade and slammed into a parked CHP vehicle.

Ashley Leah Barnachea, 29, of Santa Rosa was taken to Petaluma Valley Hospital and arrested on suspicion of drunken driving.

Staff Writer Martin Espinoza contributed to this story. You can reach Staff Writer Randi Rossmann at 707-521-5412 or randi.rossmann@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter@rossmannreport