Posted on 04/30/2023 4:50:59 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Anurag Chandra drove behind the teens and rammed their vehicle, killing three and injuring three others in Temescal Valley, California. The car went off the road and into a pole.
A California man who rammed a car carrying a group of teenagers who had played a doorbell prank at his home in 2020 was convicted Friday of murder.
Three teenage boys died and three others were injured when they were struck by a car driven by Anurag Chandra, and the vehicle they were in careened off the roadway and into a pole in Riverside County, authorities said.
A jury convicted Chandra, 45, on Friday of three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder.
“The murder of these young men was a horrendous and senseless tragedy for our community," Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin said in a statement Friday. "This is an important step toward justice."
Killed in the Jan. 19, 2020, crash were Daniel Hawkins of Corona; Drake Ruiz of Corona; and Jacob Ivascu of Riverside. All were 16.
The crash happened just before midnight in the community of Temescal Valley, authorities said. The area is about 60 miles southeast of Los Angeles.
Three other teens in the vehicle, including its driver, Sergio Campusano, 18, were injured.
Campusano told NBC Los Angeles that one of the boys rang the man's doorbell and ran back to their awaiting vehicle as part of a prank known as doorbell ditch or ding-dong ditch.
Darwin Awards all around.
The article says he’s facing life without parole! I’m so furious Commiefornia abandoned the death penalty!
I think every kid from my generation did that kind of thing at least once. Some more than once.
Kind of the generational equivalent of calling a local tobacco store and asking “Do you have any “Prince Albert” in a can? When they said yes, you squealed out “Well, you better let him out, then!” before hanging up and snickering with your juvenile friends!
We did a thing for a while where we played “Reveille” at people’s houses in the morning. We were in a CYO band. We called it “Masked Trumpeting”.
We would show up at 5AM in front of some person’s house who was in the band with us, the guy who played the trumpet would put on a green Zorro type of mask, jump out and start playing Reveille in the loudest, brassiest, most obnoxious way that he could, then we all sped away in my van, going around corners on two wheels as the doors, held closed with clothesline, threatened to spill everyone out into the roadway.
Laughing the entire time.
We were in a CYO band, and our trumpet player was the only one in our group who wasn’t a drummer...:) The parents would say he was hanging around with a bad crowd!
Given that I was the only one driving a 66 Dodge Van, and they could easily get to a window to see who sped off, they all knew who was doing it, but...nobody ever called us on the carpet for it. I know it annoyed some of them, and I know for a fact their neighbors complained to them about it whenever we did it, but...I think everyone just passed it off as a stupid thing kids did, and it wasn’t alcohol and drugs!
The summer of 75...:) That was a wonderful summer, absolutely wonderful. Warm evenings, parties, the real world still off in the future. Then I joined the Navy...
One of the boys killed was the son of Craig Hawkins who some might know from Christian apologetics.
Looks like Apu was out of character (re. The Simpsons).
Ding Dong Ditch was a routine Friday night activity when I was 16 back in 1970.
During the ‘60s, American victims of that prank would only come to the door and say something like, “I know what you’re doing! You kids go home and be good!” First, second or third generation foreigners are different. They try to kill kids who knock and run.
Throw shelled feed corn at windows or knock on the door and run, around Halloween time.
Windows were soaped.
We were younger than these guys and didn't drive, so, these guys are a bit old for this and it is a different and scarier time.
That said, what a huge, disproportionate and final overreaction to a prank.
Well to be honest nowadays you never know what’s on the other side of that door.
RAMMED THEM?? TO DEATH??
Good thing they didn’t TP his front yard before ringing the doorbell!
God only knows what mighta happened then...
AND, FWIW, red-blooded AMERICANS never retaliated like this.
I used to do it...and used firecrackers. Never would get caught though.
My dad actually told me he used to do it with a burning bag of dog poo. When the person came out they saw fire and stomped it out getting dog crap all over their shoe.
I did it when I was 8-12.
Sometimes the stupid part of being a stupid kid wins.
Btw, ringing a doorbell and running never occured to me as a child or teen.
Let me correct myself: We did, one year, knock on Halloween doors and run...so I was stupid, too. Didn’t get killed, tho.
FedEx drivers do that all the time.
“The teens fled in a Prius”
Guy is definitely a ‘fat head’.
The 3 victims were white, that’s why this story didn’t get the coverage it should have when it happened. If the kids were black and the perp white, we would have heard about it every single day for years.
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