Driver who hit sedan during police pursuit, killing 2 boys, faces 30 years in prison

An unlicensed driver who tried to evade police during a pursuit and crashed into a car in Mountain View, killing two young boys, is slated to be sentenced Thursday.

Angel Velasquez Salgado, 21, faces a sentence of 30 years to life in state prison in the deaths of brothers Malikai, 8, and Mason Orozco-Romero, 4. The boys were riding in the back seat of a sedan that the driver rear-ended, propelling it down an embankment and into a tree, where it caught fire.

Two women in the sedan, including the boys’ mother, were injured, but survived.

Salgado pleaded guilty to two counts of murder, plus other charges, for the Dec. 8, 2023, crash on an Interstate 805 off-ramp.

According to testimony from a three-day preliminary hearing last year, the San Diego police officers who pursued Salgado first took notice of a headlight out on his BMW.

The officers testified that, after following the BMW for a short while, they saw it abruptly pull into the driveway of a residence on 32nd Street. A check of the vehicle indicated its registered owner did not live at that address.

When the officers attempted to pull over the BMW, the car sped off and made other unsafe driving maneuvers such as swerving around other cars and running a stop sign.

Officer Jackson Carroll, who was driving the police vehicle involved in the chase, testified that the BMW’s driver was “actively attempting to evade us” by frequently switching lanes, driving onto the shoulder and in a bus lane in order to pass slower vehicles.

The chase spanned northbound Interstate 15, eastbound state Route 94 and southbound Interstate 805, where Salgado crashed into the victims’ vehicle at the 43rd Street off-ramp.

California Highway Patrol Officer Richard Vargas testified that Salgado drove onto the right shoulder of the off-ramp and struck the rear right side of the victims’ Honda. The impact sent both vehicles spinning down the embankment.

After the crash, Salgado ran from the BMW and was arrested a short time later at a nearby residence.

Salgado also pleaded guilty to hit-and-run causing injury for striking another vehicle earlier in the pursuit, and felony evading for a separate San Diego police chase that occurred about seven months before the fatal crash.

The deadly collision prompted calls to re-examine San Diego police policies regarding vehicle pursuits. The boys’ family also filed a wrongful-death suit that alleges officers should have terminated the pursuit in the interest of public safety.

In response to the crash, the city’s Commission on Police Practices published a series of preliminary recommendations aimed at crafting a police department pursuit policy to prevent fatal incidents such as the boys’ deaths, or last year’s crash that killed Officer Austin Machitar, don’t recur.

The commission stated that property crimes, misdemeanors and traffic violations were among the offenses that don’t warrant pursuits and that officers should initiate pursuits only when they believe the suspect would pose an imminent threat to public safety if they weren’t immediately caught.

The police department later responded in a written memo, taking issue with some of the committee’s recommendations, including the one to restrict pursuits to certain offenses.

“SDPD believes imposing these restrictions could negatively impact public safety, which is unacceptable to the department and the communities it serves,” the memo reads.

The department also stated that there was a correlation between “rising crime rates and restrictive pursuit policies” in other cities and states..