A California man who crashed a car into a group of teenagers who had played a prank on the doorbell at his home in 2020 was convicted of murder on Friday.
Three teenagers were killed and three others were injured when they were hit by a car driven by Anurag Chandra, and the vehicle they were riding in went off the road 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 killing of these young men was a horrific and senseless tragedy for our community,” Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin said in a statement Friday. “This is an important step towards justice.”
Daniel Hawkins, of Corona, died in the Jan. 19, 2020, crash; Drake Ruiz de Corona; and Jacob Ivascu of Riverside. They were all 16.
The crash happened shortly before midnight in the Temescal Valley community, authorities said. The area is about 60 miles southeast of Los Angeles.
Three other teenagers in the vehicle, including its driver, 18-year-old Sergio Campusano, were injured.
Campusano told NBC Los Angeles that one of the boys rang the man’s doorbell and ran back to his waiting vehicle as part of a prank known as doorbell casting or ding-dong casting.
The teenagers fled in a Prius, with Campusano behind the wheel, but soon realized the target of the prank was chasing them, he said.
The man struck the back of the teenagers’ car, sending it off the curb as it sped down Temescal Canyon Road at Trilogy Parkway, Campusano and authorities said.
“I went into my window and I blacked out and then I remember waking up on the floor,” Campusano said. “I don’t remember how I got there. I was shaking.”
During the trial Chandra said he had 12 beers before chasing the teenagers and was “extremely, extremely mad,” according to the Riverside Press-Enterprise. He said he was also worried about the safety of his family, home at the time, the newspaper reported.
He said he never intended to hit the teenagers’ car, but rear-ended them after the Prius suddenly braked, the Press-Enterprise reported. He didn’t stop after hitting the car because he didn’t realize there were injuries, Chandra said, according to the newspaper.
His attorney, David Wohl, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Chandra faces life without the possibility of parole when he is sentenced on July 14.
