A 19-year-old was arrested Tuesday for allegedly being intoxicated and driving recklessly last winter when his car broadsided a sedan pulling out of a parking lot at Poway High School, killing the other motorist and his teenage son.
Donald Lee Farmer was booked late Tuesday morning on suspicion of DUI, gross vehicular manslaughter and driving without a license, according to jail records.
Shortly after 7 p.m. Feb. 12, Farmer was driving a Mercedes-Benz southbound that struck the driver’s side of the victims’ Toyota in the 15000 block of Espola Road, San Diego Sheriff‘s Sgt. David Toner said.
The driver of the Toyota, 54-year-old Steve Pirolli, died at the scene of the crash. Paramedics took his 13-year-old son, Stephen, to Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego, where he was pronounced dead.
Though authorities initially did not believe that intoxication played a role in the collision, accident investigators decided otherwise following an “extensive reconstruction of the incident,” sheriff’s Capt. David Schaller said.
“Based on their investigation, they determined Farmer was (allegedly) driving under the influence of drugs and had been driving recklessly,” Schaller said.