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Re: Laughing gas tank found in fatal car crash
GARDEN GROVE - A sidewalk memorial to two dead sisters took shape Monday while investigators and family members tried to make sense of the car crash that killed them - and to explain the canister of laughing gas found in the wreckage.
The two women, young mothers from Santa Ana, died early Sunday when their car veered off Euclid Street and slammed into a tree. A third woman in the car was hospitalized with major internal injuries, broken bones in her face and severe burns.
The impact was so crushing that it tore the car almost in half. Police found the speedometer more than 100 feet away; it was stopped at 60 mph, but police said there's no way to know whether that's how fast the car was moving.
Police also found a half tank of nitrous oxide - the laughing gas of dental offices - on the floor of the front passenger's side. The gas is sometimes used at rave parties to induce a brief high that some users have compared to floating; police said they were still not sure why it was in the car.
An autopsy of the two women killed in the crash - Blanca Lopez, 19, and Carol Lopez, 18 - concluded that both died of multiple and severe traumas. Coroners requested special tests for nitrous oxide in addition to the standard toxicology tests, but those will likely take several weeks to complete.
Blanca Lopez had two daughters, ages 2 and 5 months. She had begun to talk about marriage with her boyfriend, Armando Nuñez. Her sister, Carol, had a 5-month-old girl and was studying to become a nurse.
The third person in the car, Martha Ochoa, 17, was their cousin.
The three women were returning home after partying at an underage event at a nearby nightclub, according to police. Blanca Lopez was driving and lost control of the car, crashing it into the tree. Police think she was speeding.
"I've been a cop for over 18 years," traffic investigator Chris Wasinger said. "This is the most spectacularly damaged vehicle I've ever seen."
Police found a bag of balloons in the car in addition to the nitrous oxide. People who abuse laughing gas often inhale it from balloons. State investigators have caught dealers selling balloons of nitrous oxide at raves for $20.
But the bottle of gas the women had in the car was not fitted for filling balloons, Wasinger said.
Blanca Lopez's boyfriend, Nuñez, said he noticed the nitrous-oxide tank when he got into the backseat of the car earlier in the evening. He said he did not know where it came from or why it was there. None of the women, he said, ever used nitrous oxide.
Car racers also use the gas to "supercharge" their engines, allowing them to burn more fuel and run faster. But the car the women were in, a Toyota Camry, had none of the equipment it would need to use the gas.
"I don't think there's any way we're going to know" why a bottle of nitrous oxide was in the car "until we talk to the girl," Garden Grove police Lt. Robert Fowler said. He did not know when Ochoa, the only survivor of the crash, would recover enough to talk.
On Monday, seven bouquets of red and white roses decorated the sidewalk near where Blanca and Carol Lopez died. The only other signs of what happened there were a few scratches in the tree and some broken glass.
The family was trying to line up money for funerals for the two women. Their youngest brother, Anthony, 14, was handing out handwritten flyers to anyone who paused at the memorial.
"In memories of Blanca Lopez and Carol Lopez," they read. "We will always miss you."
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