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Newport Beach crash: Grandmother tracked dead granddaughters by cell phone GPS (video)
A Newport Beach crash that killed five Irvine teens on Monday, May 27, 2013.
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NBC Los Angeles
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A makeshift memorial at the site where five teenagers were killed in a solo car wreck on Jamboree Road in Newport Beach.
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Ed Joyce/KPCC
)
The grandmother of two victims in Monday night's horrific Newport Beach car crash tracked one of her granddaughters through the GPS on her cellphone as it traveled first to multiple hospitals — ending up at the coroner's office, CBSLA.com reported.
Benilda Samps — whose granddaughters Robin Cabrera, 17 and Aurora Cabrera, 16, perished in the crash — didn't realize at first what the tracking signal meant, CBSLA reported.
She recalled finding out about the incident through a GPS device attached to one of the girls' cellphones, watching the tracker travel to multiple hospitals and wondering why.
"It ended up with the girls in the Coroner's Office," she said.
But Alyahyan was cited April 20 for violating terms of a provisional license. Those violations included illegal modifications to his car.
The department is "following the trail of his application after he initially came in to apply," said DMV spokesman Armando Botello.
Alyahyan applied for a license after his 16th birthday in 2012, but the Saudi Arabian native didn't provide required documentation proving his legal presence in the U.S., said Jan Mendoza, a spokeswoman with the California Department of Motor Vehicles.
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Alyahan tried again in February, after turning 17, and had his picture taken by the DMV but still did not provide the proper documents, she said.
His application was still pending when he drove his Infiniti G35 into a tree in a single-car accident that also killed four teenage friends. "This person was never licensed, period," Mendoza told the AP.
Newport Beach police have said speed was a factor in the crash.
NBCLA posted video of a Wednesday night vigil for the victims that drew some 500 mourners, which you can view below.
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