ARCADIA – The city’s legal team and traffic safety experts Sunday re-created the scene of a crash that killed a teenage girl and badly injured another in hopes of learning more about the circumstances of that fatal crash, which occurred just over a year ago.
Officials blocked off the 600 block of Duarte Road, between Baldwin and Lovell avenues, as they studied the crosswalk where Alice Zhang, 16, of Arcadia was fatally injured and her friend Priyanka Patel, 17, of Upland was badly hurt on April 10, 2011.
Investigators mounted a camera inside a car similar to the one driven by Du in the crash as they ran it through the movements involved in the fatal crash.
A gurney with a camera mounted on it was used to capture
the point-of-view of the victims, and two women of the same heights as Zhang and Patel repeatedly re-enacted the crash in concert with the Lexus as officials and traffic engineers studied the scene.
Investigators said the driver’s “excessively dirty” windshield, along with glare from the afternoon sun, played a major role in the crash.
The driver – Bowen Du, 20, of Arcadia – has been sentenced to a year in jail after pleading guilty last year to a misdemeanor count of vehicular manslaughter and reckless driving.
