Alcohol and Drugs Involved in Fatal Crash

By Hans Laetz

A 17-year-old Thousand Oaks girl remained in critical condition Thursday after the car she was riding in cartwheeled down Pacific Coast Highway above Broad Beach 36 hours earlier, killing its driver.
A large, empty bottle of Jägermeister, a potent 70-proof liqueur, and a marijuana bong and container were found in the wreckage of the Subaru SUV that sat overnight Tuesday on PCH just west of Broad Beach Road’s western end.
Cody James Murphy, a junior at Newbury Park High School, was behind the wheel of the vehicle as it spun out of control, went up an embankment, and then landed on its roof about a mile west of the traffic signal at Trancas.
Murphy’s devastated parents arrived at the crushed car at midnight to identify their son’s body. Deputies said they suspect the boy had been drunk, but are awaiting toxicology results.
Sgt. Philip Brooks said the unnamed female passenger, who was in the middle of the back seat, has severe head injuries. She was helicoptered to UCLA Medical Center from the Zuma Beach helipad following the 10:20 p.m. crash.
The two boys who were sitting on either side of the girl suffered broken hips, and were taken by ground ambulance to the same hospital.
A fourth male passenger sitting in the front right seat suffered only a slight cut to the head, and remained at the scene, alternately shrieking in anguish and calmly talking to deputies as friends and family arrived from the Thousand Oaks area.
Brooks said the five, all students at Newbury Park High School, went to see a rock music show in Hollywood but missed it.
“They went down to the Santa Monica Pier and drank their Jägermeister there,” Brooks said. The intact bottle with its cap on was found in the car after it was flipped over in the morning.
“Also, we found a marijuana smoking device, a large blue glass pipe thing about a foot long, with hooks and curves, as well as an empty marijuana canister from a medicinal marijuana dispensary,” Brooks said. “It had a blue label from a dispensary, but it was empty."
Murphy was at the wheel driving northwest from Trancas when the vehicle drifted to the right just past the western Broad Beach road intersection at 10:20 p.m., Brooks said.
“I could see where he got a good centrifugal spin, he went up the embankment. The car then flipped head over heels several times, went back on the highway on its roof and spun around on its roof before coming to a rest” in the left of the two northbound lanes.
The road was closed to northbound traffic until 8:20 a.m. Wednesday. Deputies were using laser beams, laptop computers and a sophisticated accident-reconstruction computer program to measure skid marks, points of impact and local survey points.
Damage to the front and rear ends of the car indicated that it had flipped over end-to-end several times. Numerous gouge marks were visible in the pavement, but the car was so badly smashed that its make and model were impossible to ascertain without registration records.
Strewn about the accident scene were backpacks, schoolbooks and a nearly new Dodgers cap.
Grief counselors were sent to the Newbury High campus Wednesday, and school officials there said they would cancel a planned assembly this month on the dangers of drunken driving.
Friends of the dead youth set up a makeshift shrine at the site on Wednesday. Residents in the area reported seeing what appeared to be clusters of high-school age boys and girls regularly stopping by the site to pay their respects.