A 53-year-old Long Beach woman died Wednesday night after a two-vehicle crash on northbound Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach sent her Kia Soul into the wetlands south of Warner Avenue. A 23-year-old Long Beach man was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence after the BMW sedan he was driving rear-ended the Kia at about 10:40 p.m.
Huntington Beach Fire Department lifeguards helped remove the woman from the SUV before she was taken to a hospital, where she died. Authorities said it was not yet clear whether the collision itself killed her or whether she drowned after the crash, and the cause of death remained under investigation.
The woman was not publicly identified because relatives had not yet been notified. That leaves investigators with the central question now hanging over the case: whether the force of the impact, the water, or both led to her death. The answer will matter to the criminal case against the driver and to any later scrutiny of what happened in the minutes after the crash.
